The Raincoast Conservation Foundation, which opposes trophy bear hunting, has put its money where its mouth is with the recent purchase of the hunting rights for 3,500 square kilometres of B.C.'s central coast.
This brings to 28,000 square kilometres the hunting rights the foundation controls - it bought rights to 25,000 square kilometeres of coastal land north of Vancouver Island in 2005. The two purchases total more than $1.6 million, money contributed by people who believe strongly in bear conservation.
Protesting is easy; doing something about an issue sometimes comes at a price, and the supporters of the foundation are willing to pay that price.
The latest rights purchase includes areas around Princess Royal Island, home of the highest concentration of Kermode bears. Named after Francis Kermode, a zoologist who retired in 1940 as the curator of the Provincial Museum of B.C. (now the Royal B.C. Museum), the bears are also known as spirit bears.
Protecting the territory of these bears is important because, while it's illegal to hunt Kermode bears, they are a subspecies of the black bear in which about 10 per cent of the population has white or cream-coloured coats. A hunter shooting a black bear in that region could be depleting the Kermode population without knowing it.
The foundation's purchase of hunting rights also means more protection for grizzly bears.
The province estimates the grizzly population at 15,000, and issued more than 3,700 tags this year for the spring and fall hunt. Hunters and poachers shoot about 300 grizzlies each year.
While a case can be made for shooting wild animals for food or to protect humans and their livelihoods, it's more difficult to justify shooting B.C.'s bears merely for sport. It's an activity that brings revenues into the province, as many of the hunters are from outside the province and country, but increasingly, bear hunters are coming armed with cameras, not guns.
Bear-watching is a growing business in B.C. Few places in the world can match the province's mountain ranges and coastal inlets for wildlife-viewing adventures. This come-hither from a B.C. government tourism website captures it nicely, and without exaggeration:
"Perch in an elevated viewing platform and witness grizzly bears pouncing on and devouring spawning salmon. Drift silently in a riverboat and listen to a black bear and her cubs munching fresh grass sedges. Or catch a glimpse of an elusive white Kermode bear lumbering along a mossy riverbank."
Why shoot the bears when we can offer an experience like that? It promotes a far better attitude toward animals and the environment than killing a bear for bragging rights and a rug for the den.
Rather than merely protesting the hunting of bears, the Raincoast Conservation Foundation has found a quiet but powerful way to further its cause. It's an example worth emulating.
