B.C. mulls return of grizzly hunting in controversial report

Alberta should also open up grizzly hunting again...

When I hunted grizz in BC (at Thutade Lake) you had to carefully stalk them because they'd take off with any hint of a human. This is a GOOD thing for the safety of everyone who spends time in grizzly country. Here in Alberta, the grizzlies I come across when elk hunting have zero fear of humans. It's learned behaviour; they've learned that humans are NOT predators. And I don't like it, not one bit...
 
rifleman762 said:
Alberta should also open up grizzly hunting again...

When I hunted grizz in BC (at Thutade Lake) you had to carefully stalk them because they'd take off with any hint of a human. This is a GOOD thing for the safety of everyone who spends time in grizzly country. Here in Alberta, the grizzlies I come across when elk hunting have zero fear of humans. It's learned behaviour; they've learned that humans are NOT predators. And I don't like it, not one bit...
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The sound of a rifle is now the dinner bell for some grizzlies...
 
nowarningshot said:
All closing the hunt accomplished is higher mortality for cubs,
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Worth expanding on, because many of those who’ve hunted them even don’t understand it. It’s odd for us hunters to consider, said having hunted more of them than most, but consistently taking the mature males from a population doesn’t increase its health in the long term. Quite the opposite. Yea, in the near term it can result in more bears reaching maturity allegedly, but another male always takes the role if the king of the valley gets shot. Maybe he assumes the role before his natural time, but the position never goes empty. Because it’s their nature. Just as it’s our nature to desire to hunt, we evolved this way.

Cub mortality, as when a weaker sow isn’t able to successfully defend its cubs, is part of the system and makes sure only the strongest and smartest sows’ cubs, who’ve grown to the largest sizes out of the local cub population by that time of the year and are most able to escape, make it to adulthood. Alternatively, you often find a sow way off into new territory when they have very small or immature cubs, or they themselves are small or undersized. We found this in small rivers and valleys with small salmon runs the big bears ignored, chasing the bigger fish so to speak. This spreads out the population and creates reservoirs of different genes, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Vancouver Island grizzly population started this way, pushed out of a higher density population.

We don’t like it, but it’s part of how grizzly bears keep their gene pool strong. In the end it’s no less ugly in reality than Americans travelling up, or you or I heading out to shoot them, it’s all relative. When you look at how grizzlies manage their own genes and populations from afar, it’s actually quite impressive. We anthropomorphize them and see cub predation as ugly, when in reality, it’s a hard way to a noble function even if they bear doesn’t know why he’s doing it. The bears don’t hold the same grudges we do, you’ll see a sow who had her cubs killed willingly mate later with the male who did it.

I think it’s important we understand the life cycles and habits of the animals we’re out there with, and be careful not to vilify behaviour we don’t understand too quickly. Killing cubs doesn’t make a grizzly boar bad, it just makes him a dominant grizzly doing what he’s evolved to do. I’m not arguing your following points, just this one is poorly understood and I’ve singled it out for a better look.
 
great explanation Angus. thank you.

when we tried to explain the same for lions it was always interesting to hear the feedback as how bad a male was when killing the youngers cubs but clever enough to not take down the females and as for grizzly sows lionness will mate with the same cubs killer.
 
When I hunted grizz in BC (at Thutade Lake) you had to carefully stalk them because they'd take off with any hint of a human
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I find it pretty unlikely that grizzlies at THUTADE LAKE were so pressured they feared humans.

I think the opposite is more likely to be true. Eastern slopes grizz don't fear humans because they are in regular proximity to them. These are apex predators not whitetail deer.

My point with asking (rhetorically even though it was answered, though likely in an attempt to expand on my point) what number of grizzlies were shot yearly in BC is that it is unlikely the hunt has changed grizzly behavior to a great extent.

Bears are intelligent long lived animals, they transmit " culture" to their offsprings ( generational trails, feeding strategies etc). I don't think a handful of years is going to change the collective memory of negative interactions with humans in BC grizz populations. And they are certainly still being shot all over the province.

Not making a case against the hunt, just saying an appeal to public safety really suggests that those who make it neither spend a lot of time in grizz habitat or understand their behaviour

Personally I think if grizzly are truly returning to the plains that is pretty damn cool. Read any account of early Europeans on the plains, massive scavenger grizz followed bison herds across territory we now think of as pronghorn and whitetail country. There were even grizz recorded in the sask River delta area relatively recently. This is a return to normal, not some crazy outlier event
 
A bear that’s shot passes nothing on that it learned about the danger of humans to the following generations. Seeing as grizzlies are quite solitary animals most of the year too, most that got shot weren’t witnessed by other grizzlies who would go on to ‘spread the word’. It’s faulty logic.

The only argument would be those that don’t travel furtively or nocturnally all the time get shot, but you’d literally have to shoot most of the bears that aren’t skittish while young and prevent them from breeding. Hunting pressure may select for sneaky bears and alter behaviour over time though that’s unlikely with the numbers harvested in recent decades.

Grizzlies are grizzlies because they are bold. That’s a hard trait to shoot out of them, and I hope we never succeed.
 
Not to mention evolutionary changes require many generations of selective pressure, not single events

To "shoot the boldness" out of grizzlies would not be hard. It would be impossible, they are, as I said, apex predators, a silver tip grizzly has 1000's of years of evolution and a long lifetime of being the "king of the valley" behind it. A small percentage of its peers getting shot yearly won't change that
 
legi0n said:
not sure about that
genetically the population would improve
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Would be pretty dang presumptuous of us to think we’ve just cracked a system evolved over millions of years that ensures the best genes in a population are passed on the most, in the single century since Roosevelt was president. There’s a reason all the Chadwick rams and the mega tuskers are in the past, we’re not making a stronger gene pool with how we select the kill in my opinion. Nature selects for the utter and complete opposite of what we do as hunters, at least that’s true of trophy hunting.

Finally the fairy tale of taking them in their last season alive is a curious one too, the “worn teeth” argument. Grizzlies live twenty to thirty years naturally (and as long as 39 years coastal), and we saw very few on death’s door. Some bears the casual hunter would assume to be in their last season by a hitched gate or skinnier appearance, I watched return for six years. Death’s door is an extremely short phase in the wild, that you’re unlikely to catch as they often don’t even make it out of the den at that stage.

It’s rough out there, between grizzly to grizzly fights for food and the trials of hibernation they seldom get to grow truly old, nature is uncompromising. Worn teeth are completely normal as well due to how they live and not an indication they’re at the end of their reign. Hunting has its place, but our assuming we’re meant to kill and select for the best genes and that’s helping a population of animals that did not evolve as prey, is very misguided and a refracted view influenced by our beliefs rather than reality.

A more accurate take would be considering if the population can sustain our interest in hunting mature males, rather than try and believe we’re making them healthier by killing them. We’re definitely not improving things in a population of apex predators by repeatedly killing and selecting the best genetic examples. I’d like to see hunters objectively support the desire to hunt large males. Let’s just be honest about it and see if the population can sustain what we want to do.
 
it was well observed that in small populations having long living dominant males the "inbreeding" is high.
this applies to all mammals including mankind
 
^ that issue would be a result of a lack of contiguous habitat. Inbreeding depression occurs in small isolated populations. Grizzlies have overlapping home ranges and practice natal dispersal.

I'll be the first to admit I'm not a grizzly bear scientist but I do have a background in evolutionary biology. All this general store conversation is good and fun but "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".

In this case I'm inclined to agree with Ardent (whether he likes or dislikes what I have to say) and our current wildlife management paradigm.

Human "management" of predator species through hunting is an antiquated idea based off of a kill em all approach from the 19th and early 20th century. The best thing hunters can do for wildlife populations is respect carrying capacity and invest in contiguous habitat for the species we care about. Not shoot wolves and trophy hunt and call it conservation. I have no issue with either academically but it's arrogant to pretend we are doing wildlife populations a favour by selecting the best and the biggest.

Evolutionary forces have been in effect since the dawn of time. The North American system of wildlife management is 100 odd years old and again , based on 100 year old science.

We are working with severely depleted populations and drastically changed ecosystems all over north America and have been since the fur trade and market hunting, even in the (sub) Arctic and in currently "remote" areas of western Canada

I can't tell if geologist is joking, but I honestly think the approach of selecting animals in age ranges with high mortality (eg. Freezer bears, spike fork moose) is probably better for genetic diversity than shooting boomers. They were more likely to die and less likely to breed anyways
 
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legi0n said:
it was well observed that in small populations having long living dominant males the "inbreeding" is high.
this applies to all mammals including mankind
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Except Grizzly populations aren’t suffering and collapsing from inbreeding at all. There would have to be a problem for that to be true unfortunately, it’s more likely by far is we’re progressively removing the strongest genes from the population. And the B&C record books support that theory, on many species.

It’s a dustbowl era strategy for rebounding over-hunted populations of prey animal species, principally deer, that has been applied wholesale to species that are apex predators evolved at the top of the food chain. Grizzlies already have a complex system of gene pool and population management culling weaker individuals and immature young, and it manages their own genetics well.

The argument in support of grizzly trophy hunting by hunters should be honest and pragmatic, based on where the practice is sustainable. Rather than attempt to justify a flawed rationale developed for animals in a far different position on the food chain and say shooting grizzlies improves their health, size, and gene pool.
 
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it’s more likely by far is we’re progressively removing the strongest genes from the population. And the B&C record books support that theory, on many species.
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Eh, if I had to guess I'd say this has a lot more to do with habitat destruction than selective pressure from sport hunting
 
Ardent said:
Except Grizzly populations aren’t suffering and collapsing from inbreeding at all.
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they are suffering. Don't forget that the overall number of bears in BC (cca 15000) is small to begin with.
The isolated population in the Stein-Nahatlatch unit has declined since monitoring began in 2005 (McLellan et al. 2019), and the number of grizzly bears in the North Cascades area in BC and Washington State is very low with
no evidence for an increase over the past many decades.
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What number would constitute a healthy grizzly population? Large long lived predators have a low carrying capacity in general

If you're going to cherry pick single data points from studies at least name them..
 
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