I recently had the pleasure of visiting grizzly-bear country, inside the traditional Bute Inlet territory of the Homalco Nation.
Deep in the dense forest, with impossibly massive bears fishing the shores of a salmon-packed river, it was a page out of National Geographic. We saw nine grizzlies, including a female with her spring cubs, and a newly independent juvenile gamely trying to catch his lunch.
I come to see family and friends in your province often. I also come, as do so many from around the world, to see iconic wildlife in their natural settings.
Many of us deeply concerned for threatened wildlife were impressed when the people of B.C. made trophy hunting of grizzlies an election issue. When the new NDP government promised to end it, we looked forward to seeing that promise delivered quickly. The ban would be precedent-setting, with far-reaching implications. In a post-Cecil-the-lion world, people everywhere are agreeing that we will no longer tolerate the relentless killing of animals for what some people call sport.
Instead, the promised B.C. ban was both inexplicably delayed until after a full fall hunt season, then when delivered was incomplete. It was and is critically compromised by allowing the killing of grizzlies for meat. Safari Club International has actively interfered in this matter since the campaign for the ban began, even calling on rank-and-file members to crash and load media opinion polls and comments. But the reality is that while U.S. trophy hunters and local outfitters are angered by this ban, it is all too clear they see it as interference, and not as an end to the killing.
Your government has both dismissed science and insulted public intelligence by stating the hunt is sustainable and the ban was only in response to a shift in public attitudes. In a classic example of ethical doubling, Premier John Horgan once agreed grizzlies are struggling to survive habitat disruption and loss, and need our full protection.
Once elected, he then promptly announced a trophy hunt ban with a meat-hunt loophole big enough to drag a grizzly through. But the fact is that few Canadians hunt grizzly at all, and fewer still — if any — hunt grizzly for meat. Now, of course, many seem to have developed an appetite, or so they claim.
A public consultation period was announced, through Nov. 2. But the consultation is about how to manage the meat hunt, not if there should be a meat hunt. Now our media are headlining the results of a second poll. It shows what people asked for before the election and what they still want, is a complete ban. No hunting for trophy, for meat, no killing of any grizzly for any reason.
It shows something else. The public has been consulted and the answer is loud and clear. British Columbians and all Canadians are the key stakeholders on this issue. The people who elected your government want a complete ban. Polls have found that 91 per cent of British Columbians and 84 per cent of Albertans, including those living in rural areas, oppose trophy hunting.
There is no question these numbers would play out across Canada and elsewhere. It would certainly be tough to come up with another issue on which 80 to 90 per cent of people polled would agree.
A new report has told us that more than half of Canada’s wildlife species are dying off at an alarming rate. Trophy hunting is unethical, insupportable and an easily eliminated threat. Canadians and tourists stand with the citizens of B.C. We demand and expect the NDP government to oppose the killing of any grizzly for any reason.
Judy Malone of Toronto is a frequent flyer to British Columbia, and founder of Tourists Against Trophy Hunting, an international coalition of conservationists, ecologists, travellers, travel agents, writers and bloggers.
