Dr. Brian L. Horejsi - I like the idea a southwest Alberta rancher recently put forward even though it's decades old – that we need to move to another option to solve the grizzly bear conservation issue in SW Alberta. When I wrote my report on the status and recovery of the grizzly bears in that part of the province in 2004 it was religiously ignored by government and even enviros because it provided long term solutions to grizzly bear conservation that meant change in the status quo.
Lets first examine a bit of history and then throw some facts into the mix. One thing that has characterized grizzly bear conservation in Alberta is a massive theme of hypocrisy. The U.S. legally designated all grizzly bears south of Canada as threatened in 1975 – Alberta waited over 30 years, all the while hunting and destroying human conflict bears with near impunity, before it did something similar. The U.S. prohibited hunting in 1990 and again, Alberta, prodded by the same ranching families now crying “grizzly”, waited 20 years to do the same. And remember, the focus was on the same population now in the news, a shared, international, interprovincial grizzly bear population. 95% of these bears live in the U.S., and for 50 years Alberta behaved as a political brat having a tantrum; old news to many citizens, we’ve heard it a thousand times – the government insisted on “made in Alberta solutions”! Now, in an about face, Alberta Sustainable Resource Development wants to work with the Americans because their population has grown under endangered species protection. And this coming from a province that has milked the grizzly bear conservation “cow” through the fence for half a century!
To make the smug statement “there are more bears in that group than the rest of Alberta”, as though Alberta biologists and managers had something positive to do with these numbers, is at best disingenuous. Mostly, it says volumes about Alberta’s failures.
There are plus/minus 65 grizzly bears in SW Alberta (south of Hwy 3) – something we knew over 10 years ago incidentally – and they face the full range and intensity of threats that produce endangered populations, from overkill to habitat fragmentation to inadequate regulatory process. Any biologist that claims that “things aren’t bad” has to be working in Alberta, because the rest of the world thinks, and rightly so, that 65 bears puts that group on a path to extinction. We’re fortunate the U.S. and B.C. will bail us out, number wise, for the near future, even though Alberta has a long history of being a mortality drain.
SW Alberta grizzlies are a separate and distinct political and geographical population, at least until we sign on to the U.S. endangered species Act, and treat SW Alberta like the U.S. treats public and private grizzly bear habitat. For a province that continually whines about going its own way, its conspicuous how, all of a sudden, grizzly bear conservation, as opposed to blunt force management, seems to be the exception.
The persistent agitators in the ranch business in SW Alberta produce well under one half of one percent of the livestock raised in Alberta. And they do even that with a constant flow of taxpayer free-bees, ranging from almost personalized babysitting by Fish and Wildlife Officers, to subsidized electric fencing, heavily discounted grazing fees on public lands, the lowest tax rate in the country, and destructive and threatening heavy handed “management” like hunting.
I don’t expect the existing conservative government, in spite of premier Alison Redford, to summon the integrity it would take to rid Albertans of the constant inflammation this group of southern Albertans has caused for decades, even when the solutions are obvious and at their finger tip. But Albertans ought to be aware this kind of anti conservation, anti democracy behavior is costing us dearly in more ways than just grizzly bear conservation, and we deserve and should demand a government that deals with this group of detractors once and for all.
Unlike more progressive land and wildlife management jurisdictions, Alberta has no land Conservation Fund. It ought to have! Just a few pennies (would that be a nickel today) for each barrel of oil extracted would support this critical and essential conservation tool. First order of the day; buyout the offending ranchers, now, and restore a future for grizzly bears while restoring the moral, scientific and political integrity of Alberta and Albertans.
23 February 2013
Dr. Brian L. Horejsi
Ecologist / wildlife scientist
Calgary, Alberta
I agree.
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