I don't understand. The want to ban tropjy grizzly bear hunting... but there's still a grizzly bear hunt? Then just repeating that they need to base it on science...
I don't understand. The want to ban tropjy grizzly bear hunting... but there's still a grizzly bear hunt? Then just repeating that they need to base it on science...
NDP gets voted in here in BC it will be cheaper and easier to move away well they are in power lol
Even if they were great for hunting they are brutal for the economy. Can't hunt much if you can't afford to go
Last edited by 180grainer; 12-18-2016 at 08:42 PM.
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Jan 13th
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The grizzly bear trophy hunt ban is nothing more than a ballot initiative put forth by the NDP.
This initiative is completely lacking as to the long term management of grizzlies in the future if the NDP is successful in pulling this off.
The harvest of a grizzly bear is part of wildlife management, whether we want to think so or not. We cannot leave one species un-hunted and left to themselves. Not even the "iconic" grizzly as some like to call them.
Heres a few points from a guy that guides non resident aliens, non resident Canadians and BC residents for grizzly bears. These are the hunters taking the rap for hunting grizzly bears for trophies.
Every grizzly taken by a client is a boost to other species of wildlife, whether the NDP or the uneducated public wants to beleive it or not. I've seen what a grizzly bear can do to a goat population or how they can lower the recruitment of moose and caribou calves. You can bet they like lanb chops and elk calves make a damn good snack as well.
In a lot of BC, grizzly hunts are under utilized by residents. Take a look at last years regulation change where a northern RM proposed to triple the number of LEH authorizations in a MU due to the abundance of grizzly bears.
My bet is that even with the increase the resident harvest will fall short of target. That's if we get to keep the hunt.
Right now BC is facing some tough wildlife management issues.
The major culprits are habitat degradation due to the removal of the protective canopy and the creation of unlimited access.
This combination has put unprecedented predation squarely onto wildlife. Both two legged predators and the four legged kind.
The "mystical" wolf is the most commonly blamed predator for wildlife declines and rightly so. The wolf does one hell of a job of killing animals but most don't get it that bears do even better at stopping wildlife recruitment, even if and when wolf numbers are put in check.
As for meat removal on bears...its total horse shit. A bear is a predator, the same as a wolf or wolverine. They should be managed as a predator. The fur should be utilized, the meat should be left up to the discretion of the hunter as to if it is packed out of the bush for human consumption or left to be utilized by scavenging wildlife.
No one is shooting grizzly bears strictly as table fare and I will personally deliver the rankest smelling, tough old grizzly carcass to any clown that tells me they like the taste of grizzly meat.
It's absolutely pathetic when a political party uses a species of wildlife as a vote gathering ploy.
I hope the BCWF has the backbone to stand up and put forth that message....loud and clear.
Last edited by bearvalley; 12-18-2016 at 10:08 PM.
It's odd that NDP candidates are contradicting Horgan.
Well, no, it's not odd at all. The candidate isn't trying to bullshit hunters until after the election.
NDP pledge to end grizzly hunt brings debate out of hibernation
By Ezra Black
In 2008, Elk Valley hunter Mario Rocca shot a grizzly bear.
It was the culmination of over two decades of effort. Permits to hunt grizzlies are hard to come by and that year only one was issued for the Elk Valley.
In next May’s provincial election, hunters like Rocca could be setting their sights on New Democrat John Horgan who has promised to end B.C.’s grizzly bear hunt if his party forms the next government.
They’ll be armed with votes and not rifles.
“I know a lot more about bears than the leader of the NDP. I don’t know if he’s ever seen a grizzly bear in the wild,” said Rocca, a past-president of the Fernie Rod and Gun Club. “He’s not a hunter. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to wildlife. He’s governed by emotion, not science. From the hunters’ perspective things are being managed. We’re not going to run out of grizzly bears.”
In 2000, the NDP banned the grizzly hunt. In 2001, the Liberals were elected and ended the ban.
Tom Shypitka, the Liberal candidate for East Kootenay, said the New Democrats lost several rural seats in 2001 in part because of their stance on grizzly bear hunting. He said their decision to go for another ban betrays an urban bias.
“My reaction to the NDP's announcement was astonishment and disappointment,” he said. “They have rural members. They went through this in 2001. They have to know there are enough bears to hunt and that rural people believe in hunting. The only explanation for their decision to ban something that is supported in rural B.C. is that they have written off rural B.C. They must remember. Obviously they don't care about rural seats.”
Shypitka accused the NDP of making “a wildlife management decision on the basis of emotion, politics and urban bias.”
“Wildlife management decisions should be made on the basis of what the science supports,” he said. “If there are enough bears in a unit to support a hunt, a hunt is allowed. If there are insufficient bears to support a hunt, no hunt is allowed. That is how wildlife should be managed.”
Further left on the political spectrum, Randal Macnair, the NDP’s candidate for East Kootenay, said he’s “always supported science-based wildlife management,” but that the Liberals have got it all wrong.
“I understand why a ban has been proposed,” he said. “It is in large part a result of the appalling mismanagement of wildlife and habitat by the BC Liberals.”
Macnair said that while the Liberals have been touting their environmental management system, the fact remains that grizzly bear populations in the East Kootenay are in trouble.
“Grizzly bears used to roam from Manitoba to Mexico all across western North America,” he said. “B.C. is now their last stronghold and they are no longer living in some areas in the southern portion of our province including the Rocky Mountain Trench. A BC NDP government will work to bring everyone together to protect this special, iconic animal.”
Horgan’s announcement is dividing politicians and hunters but recently published studies suggest the real losers in the Elk Valley are bears.
Corinne Hoetmer, project coordinator for The South Rockies Grizzly Bear Project in the Elk Valley, said that while hunting accounts for a number of grizzly bear deaths a much larger number are killed in other human-bear conflicts.
The South Rockies Grizzly Bear Project is a long term, ongoing population inventory of grizzly bears lead by the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations in the Kootenay Region.
Hoetmer said the Elk Valley has become an ecological trap for grizzly bears. The animals are drawn to the valley because of food and are then killed by humans.
“More grizzlies die from non-hunting related causes in this area than anywhere else in B.C.,” she said.
Citing a paper published by Mowatt and Lamb on the population of grizzly bears in the Southern Rockies and Flathead, Hoetmer said the South Rockies grizzly bear population declined by 40 per cent between 2006 and 2014. This decline was most likely due to a decade of poor foraging in combination with an increase in human-caused mortality.
There were 116 grizzly bear mortalities recorded in the South Rockies and 44 in the Flathead during this period.
Of the human-caused mortalities in the South Rockies, 38 per cent were hunter kills, 25 per cent were for animal control and other similar reasons, 28 per cent occurred on highways and railways and 8 per cent were illegal. In the Flathead, 91 per cent of recorded kills were by hunters and 9 per cent were control kills.
“This non-hunting mortality is much more difficult to mitigate than the regulatory changes involved with mitigating mortality due to hunting,” said Hoetmer.
Joe Caravetta, an inspector with the B.C. Conservation Service's Kootenay-Boundary region, explained the number of grizzly bears hunted in the Elk Valley varies from year to year depending on population estimates.
“There are bears shot in self-defense, there are bears that are shot for protection of property, there are bears killed on the highway and there are bears killed by railways,” he said. “After taking those things into consideration we decide on what the population can handle.”
The Wildlife Act requires certain parts of an animal to be packed out of the bush once it’s been shot. While a hunter may choose to pack out its hide, paws or head, there is no requirement to pack out a grizzly bear’s meat, he said.
Grizzly bear meat is not generally eaten because it can carry the parasite that causes trichinosis, said Caravetta. The number of grizzly hunting permits issued in the Elk Valley is small. From 2013 to 2015, only one was given out.
“It’s probably the most intensely managed hunt in the province,” he said. “It’s the highest profile.”
Calling the practice “primarily a trophy hunt,” Wildsight, a Kootenay-based environmental group, has come out in favour of the ban.
“It is clear that hunting has a significant impact on grizzly bear populations in the region,” said John Bergenske, Wildsight’s conservation director. “Eliminating the hunt should significantly increase grizzly bear survival. Grizzly bears are very slow reproducers, so loss of any females in a population can significantly impact the long-term health of a population.”
one thing on the meat removal to. do we not use that carrying capacity idea to regulate the numbers. i know theirs more to it than just that, but it is one of the main sciences.
so if were using science, can someone show me in that carrying capacity where it says it will only work if we remove the meat and ate it? isnt it about just removing the animal? killing it. the food is our pay in a way for doing gov work that would happen regardless. we see it with the deer or wolf culls..they get it either way, but costs are way higher if they do it.
ive said that to a few anti`s in discission, seems to shut them up. they arent used to that one and dont have their scripted responce to it
i been watching his facebook page for him to release that first info from him, seems he`s avoided bragging about that one on there. wonder why he hides it. its obviously said diff than first statements so he avoiding his own tree hugger type from jumping on him to? he sure isnt very consistant at the answers on same questiions
Bearvalley:
You bring up a lot of good points. I don't think the public is ready to hear some of them yet, and I've never seen "Well, they better bloody well listen and wise up" work as a good sales tool
I think that we need to start changing the perception of hunting, conservation, wildlife and wild places, and I think we need to do that with a long term plan.
"It's absolutely pathetic when a political party uses a species of wildlife as a vote gathering ploy."
I think that's one of the first messages to get out. So far I've heard the Green Party and the NDP say they believe that science is the proper tool for the discharge of wildlife management. I think Andrew Weaver has actually committed to that (witness his support for predator control), but I'm not sure the rest of his party believes it. I suspect the NDP is just paying lip service to the idea.
I don't know where the Liberals stand on it (if anyone does, please get me details).
Regardless, I think the hunting community should, over the long term, define what is meant by science and then keep hammering the message.
"I hope the BCWF has the backbone to stand up and put forth that message....loud and clear."
I don't think it's a question of backbone, but I also don't have the knowledge on that to make a fair judgement. I also don't think we need to backbone to pick a fight with anyone in order to demonstrate how big and brassy our nuts are. I think we need to backbone to commit to a long term project of educating ourselves (look how often hunters disagree on management and science) and, more important, the 80% of voters who don't care all that much one way or another about hunting.
I'm going to try to make some concrete progress on this at the Region 2 Board of Directors of the BCWF by suggesting a year long policy of getting our message out to the hunting community, and through our community leverage that message to as many non-hunters as possible. That may not be the vehicle, but we'll see. We've got less than 6 months to the election, and those 6 months will be prime time for discussion.
We have a lot of personality conflicts in our community, but we also have an awful lot of expertise and knowledge. We need to put that where the people are, and that means Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. If I type "grizzly bear" into the search bar of my Facebook page I get 8 results immediately. 2 of them reference stopping the BC grizzly hunt. None of the other 6 results provide a counter point to these.
If you've only got one guy selling an idea in a marketplace of ideas, and that idea is stopping a grizzly hunt on moral grounds, he's the guy who's going to make the sale. We can't win a game that we don't even play. We need to start playing. The grizzly hunt is just a battle. As we should recognize from all our talks on this forum about mule deer, whitetail, moose, FNs, predator control, habitat and, above all else, a plan and a funding model, the war is going to last a lot longer.
As I said, I'm going to see if the Region 2 Board of the BCWF is interested in this, and I'll report back. If they are we'll need help, and if they aren't....I'll need help.
Rob Chipman
"The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders" - Ed Abbey
"Grown men do not need leaders" - also Ed Abbey
The day you start managing anything based on heart and not science is the day we are all screwed. Funny when you have a rat problem at these homeless camps for example when they move out they exterminate them all. When you have nice little pet bunnies running all over the place you hug and save them, both rodents. Two different results!!!!
but if the media shows the rats being killed it will be way doff reaction. already saw other day on news. some report about rats and they all wanted to save them to
yesterday on the news and the guide that interfeared with the whale and deer in water. they want to save the endangered whale and cry. but were ok he interfeared to help the deer that was about to be eaten. they have no clue about what their even trying to save.