Document Actions
Cancel the Trophy Hunt!
Imagine the Great Bear Rainforest without bears. It's time for Environment Minister Barry Penner to cancel the trophy hunt and dedicate resources to understanding why there are so few grizzlies on our coast this year.
There are times when an Environment Minister can afford to sit back and take stock without serious consequences. This fall is not one of those times.
First Nations, environmental organizations and ecotourism operators report that they are seeing far fewer bears and hardly any bears with cubs in large parts of the Great Bear Rainforest. Last fall, numbers of salmon declined dramatically in the same areas just when bears needed the fish most in order to fatten up for their winter hiberation and nursing newborn cubs.
Yet the fall trophy hunt continues, even in protected areas of the Great Bear Rainforest.
Read our letter to Minister Penner.
Read the Globe and Mail article.
Huge swaths of the globally treasured coastal rainforest, home to grizzly, black and Kermode bears, were recently legally protected and made off limits to logging. The world celebrated, knowing that significant areas of the bears' forest habitat was saved.
But despite these moves to protect habitat (the towering trees and salmon streams), the BC government continues to allow the bears to be hunted - for sport.
More than 11,000 grizzlies have been killed across the province of British Columbia since 1975 - 87 per cent by trophy hunters.
Stop the madness. Send a letter to BC Environment Minister Barry Penner today demanding the bear hunt be stopped.
Our ecosystems are undergoing dramatic changes. Coastal grizzly bears could be the canary in our coal mine. We don’t have sufficient information about what is happening because the BC government has cut back resources and staff responsible for monitoring. The Environment Ministry was gutted in 2002 when it lost almost one-third of its budget and staff. Astoundingly, another round of Ministry cuts occured this month.
Instead of addressing the issue of disappearing bears, the government has sanctioned another bear hunting season. We may not only lose more of one of the most charismatic species of our coast but also another opportunity to understand the changes that occur in our ecosystems and part of the alarm systems that inform us about the state of the environment.
Imagine the Great Bear Rainforest without bears. This is the time for our Environment Minister to step up to the plate, cancel the trophy hunt and immediately dedicate resources to understanding what is happening to our coastal ecosystems.
