Bear Matters BC

From the Guerrila News Network
By Zoe Blunt
Groups say Big Greens brokered a bad deal, and now ramped-up logging is devouring coastal old-growth.

In February 2006, Greenpeace, Sierra Club and other groups celebrated a historic agreement with government and industry to bring an end to the “war in the woods” in the Great Bear Rainforest area of coastal British Columbia. Less than a year later, observers say the agreement may be unraveling. Timber companies have ratcheted up the rate of clearcut logging to unprecedented levels, and guidelines for sustainable logging are not being implemented.

Ian McAllister of Raincoast Conservation Society says the sudden increase in logging on the Central Coast is “unprecedented in fifteen years.”

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From the Kootenay News Advertiser
By LISA CRANE

At the end of February, Kimberley City Council passed a resolution that they would “support the Province of British Columbia’s efforts to recover mountain caribou, primarily by protection of mountain caribou old growth habitat from further logging and motorized recreation access; and that the Province follow the most protective recommendations of the Provincial Mountain Caribou Science Team.”

Kimberley’s resolution was passed as a result of a request by Wildsight Program Manager Dave Quinn to comment on a draft Mountain Caribou recovery plan by the provincial government’s Species-at-Risk Coordinators Office. At the regular Council meeting on February 26, Quinn recommended that Council support the proposed recovery plan but more emphasis should be placed on habitat protection. His presentation focused on why caribou are threatened and that habitat protection is the key to their survival.

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DENVER, March 23 (UPI) — U.S. wildlife officials say there are so many grizzly bears in Yellowstone National Park, they are no longer considered a threatened species.

There are now more than 500 grizzlies in a 14,000-square-mile region in and around the park, USA Today reported.

They will be taken off the endangered-species list by late April and gray wolves will be removed from the list by the end of year, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services said.

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By Candice Marshall

Wednesday March 14, 2007

Leona Green, who is a federally and provincially licensed Wildlife Rehabilitator, lives in a trappers cabin ten kilometers west of Dawson Creek. Green has been featured in the March 2007 edition of Canadian Living. She fosters abandoned or orphaned animals until they are strong enough to be sent back into the wild.

Green became a Wildlife Rehabilitator 28 years ago when a family friend brought her a snowy owl with a concussion. That same year, Green was asked to care for a hawk and the following spring, she was taking care of a fawn. Green says that everything “kind of snowballed from there”. Soon, Green’s farm became the home for coyotes, lynx, foxes, hawks, black bears, owls, and grizzly bears. She claims that she is the only known person in North America who is able to rehabilitate grizzly bears.

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www.whitehorsestar.auth.php?.r=46357
By STEPHANIE WADDELL

A Whitehorse man has been ordered to pay $3,500 over six months, is prohibited from hunting in the Yukon for three years and cannot get a special guiding licence in the territory for six years.
Deputy territorial court Judge Jack McGivern made the order on David Odo this morning following a joint submission from Crown prosecutor Lee Kirkpatrick and defence lawyer Keith Parkkari.
Odo pleaded guilty to possessing wildlife killed contrary to the territorial Wildlife Act and providing false information.

Last May, Kirkpatrick noted, in bringing forward the agreed facts, Alberta resident Richard Graves had been scheduled to go on a special guided grizzly hunt in the territory.
When his guide’s mother died just before the hunt, Odo agreed to take him on the trip. They didn’t spot a grizzly at that point.
Then, last May 25, Graves shot a bear with Odo and the guide who had been set to take him out on his original hunt. That hunt, however, was not in a proper subzone where hunting is permitted, the court heard.
Initially, Odo switched the hunting tags to make it appear he shot the bear.
He then switched them back, with he and Graves reporting the kill the next day but stating the animal had been hunted in a proper zone around the Takhini Hot Springs Road.
Odo signed the forms knowing the information was false, Kirkpatrick said.
The false information was discovered by a conservation officer who came across a website showing pictures of the kill. The officer recognized it as being in the Haines Junction area, rather than the Takhini Hot Springs Road, and was able to go find the remains of the carcass, it was noted.
As an aggravating factor, Kirkpatrick pointed out, Odo actively misled officers. That caused an extensive investigation involving the U.S. Secret Service at one point.
His guilty plea though has saved the court the time and money that would have been spent on a trial, she said. Odo had been originally set to go to trial this morning.
While the maximum fine would be $50,000 and up to a year in jail for each of the two offences Odo pleaded guilty to, Kirkpatrick and Parkkari agreed to a sentence of the fine and prohibitions from hunting and guiding.
A further charge against Odo was stayed.

Groups want greater emphasis on protection, rather than more hunters killing more animals
Larry Pynn, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, July 28, 2007

A coalition of conservation groups took aim Friday at the B.C. government for proposed changes to the 25-year-old Wildlife Act that put an emphasis on killing rather than saving animals.

The coalition is angry that the province wants to generate 20,000 new hunters in B.C. by 2014 — with an emphasis on more young hunters — and continue the unpopular grizzly bear hunt.

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Your Vancouver Sun

Nicholas Read, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, March 03, 2007

In case another cautionary tale is needed about how small the world is, and how what we do here can affect others elsewhere in ways we can’t always predict, here is one about Asia, British Columbia and grizzly bears.

Two years ago, University of Victoria wildlife toxicologists Jennie Christensen and Peter Ross showed that grizzly bears were being contaminated with PCBs — plasticizers used in a variety of products — and DDT, a type of pesticide, when they fed on salmon that had returned to B.C. to spawn.

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BEAR INFORMATION EXCHANGE FOR REHABILITATORS, ZOOS AND
SANCTUARIES

ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS
Bearkeepers.net wants to invite you to participate in BIERZS 2007, The Symposium
hosted by Western University of Health Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine
(http://www.westernu.edu/xp/edu/veterinary/home.xml ) in Pomona, California.
The conference will be held on Friday, August 24th 2007 to Sunday, August 26th
2007, inclusive at Western University of Health Sciences, the Los Angeles Zoo
( http://www.lazoo.org/condorall/ ), and a local sanctuary.

The future of bear conservation is contingent upon building bridges of
communication and cooperation between bear care professionals. This symposium
will bring together bear caregivers interested in sharing information on bear
behavior, husbandry, enrichment, training and preventive medicine to enhance
captive bear care and global bear conservation efforts.

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