Read what GB scientist Clayton Lamb has to say about learning to live with Grizzly Bears.
Then read what two men who have studied wildlife for many decades have to say about keeping the bears away from people.
This is important because when we get a change of government in BC, there will be a debate about bringing back a GB hunt. One argument against a hunt will be that hunting does not change bear behaviour. That argument is being made today in Wyoming where they are debating a GB hunt. Dr. Geist is certain that hunting keeps bears away. Ray Demarchi, life long wildlife biologist, makes an important comment about a North American experiment with bears and us as the guinea pigs.
https://globalnews.ca/news/7158409/grizzly-bear-adapting-okanagan/
B.C.’s iconic grizzly bear adapting to coexist with people in the Okanagan
The Okanagan Valley is home to many species, including grizzly bears.
“They’re there, there’s no question,” said Clayton Lamb, a wildlife scientist at the University of British Columbia.
“Not in the valley bottom proper, but right on the edge, right where the trees end and grass starts, there are bears right there,” Lamb told Global News.
If anyone should know just how many grizzly bears are living in the Okanagan, it’s Clayton Lamb.
Lamb is a post-doctoral fellow at UBC Okanagan’s campus, where his PhD work focused on ursus arcto horribillis — the grizzly bear.
Lamb’s research shows that the population of grizzlies in the Okanagan is on the rise.
In a 2015 study of the Granby grizzly bear population located just east of the Big White area, Lamb found an increase in density of grizzly bears, and that those bears are moving west towards the Okanagan.
“They are moving their way in and the Okanagan is going to be a very challenging place to coexist with grizzly bears,” Lamb said.
The fact that grizzlies are in the Okanagan, shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, considering the name Kelowna is derived from an Okanagan language term ‘Kim-ach-touch’ meaning brown bear.
Over time ‘Kim-ach-touch’ became Kelowna, meaning grizzly bear.
Lamb has just helped publish another study on grizzly bears in B.C., and how exactly they are coexisting with people.
‘It really came from a genuine place of curiosity in some ways. I mean, I live right in the middle of bear country,” said Lamb.
Lamb resides in Fernie, B.C., a town that has it fair share of conflicts with bears, both black and grizzlies.
For the study, Lamb reviewed more than 40 years of grizzly bear data.
“Following animals with collars, knowing how they survive, where they live, how many cubs they have,” explained Lamb.
The result, said Lamb, was a ‘big picture view’ of what was happening all across B.C. in terms of the grizzly bear’s status.
What Lamb found was that grizzlies are adapting their behaviour in order avoid conflict and survive next to or among human populations.
“The adults were using the landscape more and at night, so we say that they were going more nocturnal,” Lamb said.
“That really allows them to co-exist with people, in that they temporally space away, we go to bed and they come out.”
However, it takes time for grizzly bears to learn these lessons.
“We found that young bears survived very poorly,” said Lamb, who added that adult bears living next to human populations survived almost as well as adult bears in the wilderness.
Large area of Kananaskis Country closed after bear ‘made contact with hiker’
The study’s other main finding was that in order for grizzly bear populations to survive, the population needed immigrant bears to sustain itself, because becoming nocturnal isn’t enough for a grizzly to stay alive near humans.
“These kind of groups of bears near people, they cannot produce enough cubs to sustain themselves,” Lamb said.
“Even though that nocturnality is helping them, it’s still not enough,”.
Lamb says in order for grizzlies to coexist with people, another large carnivore has to adapt its behaviour as well: Man.
“We need to make some changes,” Lamb said of living with grizzlies, “we still have a ways to go.”
Valerius Geist
Jul 11, 2020, 3:18 PM (2 days ago)
In the presence of armed humans, grizzly bears vanish from sight and do become nocturnal. Ask Ralph Ritcey how many grizzly bears were killed in Wells Gray Park! The claim that hunting does not affect bears is rubbish, typical of the now malignant environmental movement and their trolls on facebook and twitter. Bears are clever and sensitive and highly frightened at being stalked or opposed firmly.. When that is missing because people are frightened of protected bears, then bears sense it and become pushy. In national parks that lead to wardens killing them. Consequently, number one and two hotspots for killing grizzly bears on the north American continent is Lake Louise and Banff Townsite in Banff National Park. That's in the refereed literature! I worked in Banff and was on excellent footing with wardens. They insured safety for visitors!
Cheers, Val Geist
RAY DEMARCHI:
The Pacific Northwest, including Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington and British Columbia is undergoing a huge international experiment in whether or not hunting grizzly bears makes them more wary of humans and therefore less likely to conflict with human interests.
There are many factors at work that confound this experiment including increasing GB numbers, expansion of human settlements into areas occupied by GBs, the innate inclination of female GBs to defend their young and of adult GBs to defend their kills.There is a belief among some GB protectionists that since Coastal GBs have access to salmon that they are well fed compared to Interior GBs and therefore less likely to act aggressively towards people. This myth discounts the basic defensive instincts of this large predator as some recent negative GB-human interactions have shown.The premise that I operated on over more than three decades in helping to develop and initiate hunting seasons and management plans for GBs in the Kootenay Region as well as over the rest of the province was that properly regulated hunting benefits both people and bears. Unfortunately the research in BC thus far has been polarized into either showing that hunting has not harmed the GB population (McLellan, Hamilton and Eastman) or that it has (various GB protectionist including biologists at UVic). The impact of hunting GBs on people and the benefits to GBs has hardly been examined objectively and has become increasingly political and emotional. In the meantime, I walk with trepidation (and a can of bear spray) in the wildlands of B.C. as this unwise experiment unfolds.
RayD