Monday, December 18, 2017

BC Legislative Library: "Grizzly Overkill in B.C. Bear Management 1999"

BC Legislative Library   .... you have to be an MLA, or the Press, to access the full document ... paid for by taxpayers.   Grizzly population in 2016 estimated by the province: 15,000.

Best guess done  nearly 20 years ago ......

 Grizzly Overkill in B.C. Bear Management       A. D. de Leeuw     November 1999



Year Yearly Yearly Kill Yearly Kill Yearly Kill

0 133 400 536
1998 7819 7819 7819 7819
1999 8141 8003 7725 7583
2000 8477 8194 7626 7337
2001 8826 9393 7524 7082
2002 9189 8600 7418 6815
2003 9568 8816 7307 6538
2004 9962 9041 7191 6249
2005 10373 9275 7071 5949
2006 10800 9519 6946 5636
2007 11245 9772 6816 5310
2008 11708 10036 6680 4970
2009 12191 10311 6539 4617
2010 12693 10598 6392 4249
2011 13000 10896 6239 3866
2012 13000 11206 6079 3468
2013 13000 11530 5913 3052
2014 13000 11866 5740 2620
2015 13000 12217 5560 2170
2016 13000 12581 5373 1701
2017 13000 12961 5178 1213
2018 13000 13000 4975 705
2019 13000 13000 4763 176
2020 13000 13000 4543 0
2021 13000 13000 4313 0
2022 13000 13000 4075 0
2023 13000 13000 3826 0
2024 13000 13000 3567 0
2025 13000 13000 3298 0
2026 13000 13000 3017 0
2027 13000 13000 2725 0
2028 13000 13000 2421 0
2029 13000 13000 2104 0
2030 13000 13000 1774 0
2031 13000 13000 1431 0
2032 13000 13000 1073 0
2033 13000 13000 701 0
2034 13000 13000 313 0
2035 13000 13000 0 0
2036 13000 13000 0 0
2037 13000 13000 0 0
2038 13000 13000 0 0
2039 13000 13000 0 0
2040 13000 13000 0 0
2041 13000 13000 0 0
2042 13000 13000 0 0
2043 13000 13000 0 0
2044 13000 13000 0 0
2045 13000 13000 0 0
2046 13000 13000 0 0
2047 13000 13000 0 0
2048 13000 13000 0 0
2049 13000 13000 0 0





















637992 618634 182055 99125





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December 18, 2017
Vancouver Sun's  Larry Pynn:
The hunting of grizzly bears for trophies and food is banned effective immediately across B.C., the NDP government announced Monday in a major policy shift.

“Protecting this iconic species is simply the right thing to do,” Minister of Environment George Heyman told a news conference in Vancouver.  Snip
 In 2016, hunters in B.C. killed 235 grizzlies — 30 per cent of them females — out of a population estimated by the province at 15,000.  Snip



.... Of those bears – an estimated 329 each year – 87 per cent have been killed by licensed hunters, with other kills attributed to causes including the shooting of problem bears by conservation officers, illegal poaching and collisions with cars and trains. ... Snip

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Grizzly Overkill in B.C. Bear Management  A. D. de Leeuw, November 1999

Recent information: Media and Outreach

BC Auditor General:



 An Independent Audit of Grizzly Bear Management

http://www.bcauditor.com/pubs/2017/independent-audit-grizzly-bear-management

http://www.bcauditor.com/sites/default/files/publications/reports/FINAL_Grizzly_Bear_Management.pdf

http://www.bcauditor.com/sites/default/files/publications/news-releases/MEDIA_Grizzly_Bear_Mgmt_NR_FINAL.pdf

2 comments:

e.a.f. said...

killing Grizzlies was making some one a lot of money. Now that that is over, perhaps we can get back to ensuring we have Grizzlies here in a couple of hundred years. One of the reasons the B.C. Lieberals most likely wanted the Grizzlies killed was so when an environmental study was done because some one wanted a mine, or oil well, or resort there would be one less thing to worry about.

as to the "outfitters" crying about lost business, perhaps they could just run tours of people taking pictures of the bears. Wouldn't even have to deal with dead bears.

JA Malone said...

Brian Horejsi, an Alberta-based large-carnivore specialist who has researched B.C. bears extensively has been a vocal critic of grizzly-bear management, calls government science a “house of cards” waiting to tumble, an “empty eggshell” of subjectivity.

“I don’t think the B.C. government has any better understanding of bear populations today than it did 10 years ago,” Horejsi says from his home office in Calgary.

In 1998, Horejsi was coauthor of an independent review of B.C.’s 1995 Grizzly Bear Management Strategy. The widely publicized review found the government’s plan sorely lacking in tough regulations to protect bears, mechanisms to implement land-use strategies to safeguard habitat, and adequate controls on hunting.

“The report is old but the material and the thrust is still relevant today, and that’s shocking,” Horejsi says.

The decade-old review took specific aim at government science, saying that “the history of population estimates in B.C. has consistently erred on the side of underestimating mortality and overestimating population size.” The average citizen would need a degree in mathematics to thoroughly understand the evolving approach to grizzly-bear population science. Early estimates were based on the number of bears killed, which was arbitrarily set at five percent of the population and considered sustainable, “thus arriving,” according to the review, “at a population estimate that justified the kill level”.


That higher number, says Mr. Moola, is the most important, because it shows that too many bears are killed even when the hunt doesn't push the grizzly deaths over the limits.

"You can't look at trophy hunting in isolation - you have to look at trophy hunting in addition to the other sources of human-caused mortality," said Mr. Moola.

"What the study shows is that if you removed trophy hunting from the picture, you would actually drop the mortality rate below what the government thinks is sustainable."

https://www.straight.com/article-151135/hunting-grizzly-bears