Bear Matters BC

Conference to hear about N. Shore bear management

Erin McPhee

Two North Shore bear conservationists will share their knowledge at an upcoming international bear conference held in Japan.

Malcolm Fitz-Earle and Barbara Murray will attend the 17th International Conference on Bear Research and Management held Oct. 2-6 in Karuizawa, Japan.

They are two of the nine Canadians and 22 North Americans attending the conference.

“I hope that I will be able to learn from meeting not just Japanese bear researchers but people from all over the world and bring back some of those ideas to the specific situation we have on the North Shore with urban bears,” said Fitz-Earle, a full time faculty member at Capilano College for 30 years and currently a professor emeritus teaching at the college part time in the area of environmental biology.

Fitz-Earle gained an interest in bear conservation following his retirement from teaching full time at the college. Bumping into Tony Webb, spokesman for the North Shore Black Bear Network, he was invited to attend an upcoming network meeting which he accepted, and has been a member ever since and has written papers on bears in urban areas.

In addition, he has also met with a number of Japanese bear conservationists who are interested in protecting bears in agricultural areas, the biggest area of concern in the country.

When the conference was announced, Fitz-Earle was asked to prepare a paper comparing the situation in Japan with that in North America.

At the conference, he’ll make a presentation entitled Bears and Agriculture: A Comparative Review of Problems and Solutions in Japan and North America.

“The primary problem is to try to reduce the number of bears that are unnecessarily killed and provide people with solutions to living with bears,” he said.

In his paper, Fitz-Earle compares the number of grizzly bears and black bears killed in North America to comparable species living in Japan, the Hokkaido brown bear and Asiatic black bear, respectively. There are an estimated 2,000 brown bears and approximately 15,000 black bears left in Japan.

“Those numbers are about one 10th of the numbers of the two (comparable) species in North America,” he said.

In Japan, an estimated 12 per cent to 15 per cent of the bear population is killed annually compared with the one per cent to two per cent of the total bear population killed annually in British Columbia.

“The people who have organized this conference are trying to learn from us in North America what sort of strategies we have been using to protect the bears,” said Fitz-Earle. “Hopefully, when I go to Japan, I will learn something from the Japanese too about their strategies.”

At the conference Fitz-Earle will provide a number of tools and strategies for farmers and landowners to use to live in harmony with the bears, some similar to advice widely touted on the North Shore, including the importance of the control of attractants and aversive conditioning.

Fitz-Earle will also participate as a panelist discussing conflicts between humans and bears.

Murray, director of Bear Matters B.C. who has been involved in a number of other bear conservation initiatives on the North Shore for the past few years, has been invited to participate in a workshop at the conference on how to coexist with bears. This is her second conference.

“I’m both excited and nervous about going to this Asian conference because many areas in the world don’t value bears and the animal kingdom like we do.

“So I know I’ll be hearing some horror stories about poaching, dancing bears, bile farms and orphan cubs, so I’m preparing myself for that,” said Murray.

“It is a learning process. I have to learn about the good with the bad to make a difference and that’s why I feel it’s really important to go.”

For more information on the conference, visit www.japanbear.org/iba.