The Plight of Alberta Grizzlies, and a Tale of Two Bear Countries

May 28, and it’s spitting snow and rain in Calgary. Typical spring weather along the spine of the Rocky Mountains, which stretch from the Yukon down to Mexico -- rugged country once thick with grizzly bears, symbols of the wildest untamed West. Well, that was before Europeans arrived, settled in and developed the best habitat, and killed grizzly bears in droves, eliminating the grizzly from 99% of its former range in the lower 48 states.

This day I am in Calgary to participate in the release of a detailed report about the plight of the grizzly bear in Alberta, our neighbor to the north, and a place that managers were saying, not so long ago, that there were an estimated 6,000 or so grizzly bears left -- plenty for the province, and plenty to help support recovery of the threatened grizzly bear in the adjacent lower 48 states. Not so today. The newest scientific data, based on a state-of-the-art method based on DNA hair sampling, shows that Alberta grizzly bear numbers are fewer than 800 individuals in seven increasingly isolated populations. A few of the remaining populations, such as the Swan Hills, Yellowhead area near Jasper Park, and Grande Cache, are staring extinction in the face. Instead of a picture of abundance, the best evidence now shows a bleak view of the viability of Alberta grizzly bears -- a view that looks a lot like it did in 1975 when all remaining grizzly bear populations in the lower 48 states were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

And that is why I am here, at the Calgary Zoo, in front of the bear cage, with my comrades representing all the major conservation organizations working on grizzly bear recovery in Alberta:  the Alberta Wilderness Association, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society – Southern Alberta Chapter, Sierra Club of Canada, Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, WildCanada Conservation Alliance, and the David Suzuki Foundation. We are gathered here in this snotty weather (that makes the bears behind the bars more perky, fortunately, for the cameras) to publically release a report written on behalf of our organizations and the Great Bear by author and conservation activist extraordinaire, Jeff Gailus: A Grizzly Challenge: Ensuring a Future for Alberta's Threatened Grizzlies.

The report’s main message: the provincial government is not doing enough to protect one of the most threatened grizzly bear populations in North America.

My role, as I said in my statement in the zoo’s conference room in front of members of the media, was to act the part of the “Spirit of Christmas Future” in Dickens’s A Christmas Carole, providing the story of the near extinction of the grizzly bear in the lower 48 states as a cautionary tale for Alberta, if the government continues to sit on its hands, instead of aggressively implementing much-needed recovery measures.

What is particularly striking to me is how the Alberta government has been able to shrug off ever-increasing pressure over the past two decades to take action to address mounting  evidence of declining grizzly bear numbers and escalating habitat loss. It’s not like we in the US have it all figured out, or have achieved real recovery of our threatened grizzly bears, but since grizzlies were legally protected in 1975, we have not  lost any populations, except in Colorado; and grizzly bears, despite the predictions of some experts, are still in our midst -- thanks to the  protections afforded by the Endangered Species Act. Unfortunately, there is no law that is similarly rigorous in Canada, and grizzly bears are not even protected as threatened under Alberta’s Wildlife Act.

I remember being up here in the early 1990s (similar weather too, I recall) at a meeting of conservationists and scientists that made my jaw drop. Like a lot of us clueless Yanks to the south, I had thought of Alberta and British Columbia as a vast cornucopia of bears, caribou and other wildlife, a place to remind us what wilderness REALLY means, and a rich source of grizzlies to support and sustain our adjacent beleaguered populations. Boy was I wrong, and I will forever be grateful for Alberta-based wildlife expert Dr. Brian Horesji for setting me straight.

So here I was, hair more grizzled than in the 1990s, making the same arguments about the importance of protecting remaining wild country -- here in a province that is often compared to Texas in terms of the influence of the energy industry.  Making the same point about the need to stop the hemorrhaging of a species that, with the lowest reproductive rate of any mammal in North America, is especially vulnerable to human-caused mortality.

 With the backdrop of caged grizzly bears like Jasper, who was taken to the zoo when he became a public nuisance after getting hooked on garbage in Jasper, it was plain that there are a lot of practical steps that the province can and must do to turn things around for Alberta grizzly bears. (These steps will be covered in tomorrow’s blog post.)

Having spent 25 years working on the conservation and recovery of grizzly bears, it is increasingly clear to me that the challenge we -- in the U.S. and Alberta -- face is ultimately about political will, combined with adequate resources to reduce human-caused bear mortality rates, protect habitat, and minimize the impacts of roads and developments in a rapidly changing environment. Survey after survey shows that the public strongly supports recovery of grizzly bears, but there is a profound disconnect between the public interest and the behavior of decision-makers.

Further, because bears straddle the 49th parallel and don’t read maps, it is especially important that we in both countries work together to solve common problems, and learn from each other’s successes and failures in protecting grizzly bears. The question is: will we?

Nigel Douglas of the Alberta Wilderness Association talking to reporters. Check out AWA’s http://www.nomoregrizzlies.com site – it is a hoot!  Many thanks to AWA Executive Director Christyann Olson for remembering to bring the camera!

Yours truly and reporter next to the bear cage at the Calgary Zoo.

Biologist and Senior Conservations Planner Sarah Elmeligi of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society – Southern Alberta Chapter, with reporters.    

Jeff Gailus, author of A Grizzly Challenge: Ensuring a Future for Alberta’s Threatened Grizzlies, talking to reporters.

All of us at the zoo: L-R, Sarah Elmeligi of CPAWS, author Jeff Gailus, Nigel Douglas of AWA, David Poulton of Y2Y, yours truly, and Kevin Strange of the Calgary Zoo.  In the background: b-roll of fragmentation/degradation of grizzly bear habitat in SW Alberta.

Peter Zimmerman, member of the (more or less) disbanded, but well intended Alberta Grizzly Bear Recovery Team, with Kevin Strange of the Calgary Zoo (many thanks for his gracious hospitality!), and reporter.

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