RAINCOAST wants BLACK BEAR HUNTING BAN

[bearvalley]

I completely get it IronNoggin, but the quote you refer to is much too vague.

To quote more...."Leaving the hide and skull undermines the collection of scientific data used to manage grizzly bears. Currently those parts are used to age and sex the animals harvested, providing critical data to scientists which is the basis for any decisions about grizzly harvest".

I get this loud and clear as we've been doing it for years.

My questions are DOES THE BCWF SUPPORT THE RETENTION OF THE HIDE, HEAD AND PAWS BY THE HUNTER?

OR DOES THE BCWF SUPPORT THE HEAD, HIDE AND PAWS BEING FORFIETED TO THE CROWN SOLELY FOR THE COLLECTION OF SCIENTIFIC DATA.

The questions aren't to hard to answer.

[Whonnock Boy]

Send your question to the office, to the people that are employed to answer these types of questions.

I completely get it IronNoggin, but the quote you refer to is much too vague.

To quote more...."Leaving the hide and skull undermines the collection of scientific data used to manage grizzly bears. Currently those parts are used to age and sex the animals harvested, providing critical data to scientists which is the basis for any decisions about grizzly harvest".

I get this loud and clear as we've been doing it for years.

My questions are DOES THE BCWF SUPPORT THE RETENTION OF THE HIDE, HEAD AND PAWS BY THE HUNTER?

OR DOES THE BCWF SUPPORT THE HEAD, HIDE AND PAWS BEING FORFIETED TO THE CROWN SOLELY FOR THE COLLECTION OF SCIENTIFIC DATA.

The questions aren't to hard to answer.

[bearvalley]

Send your question to the office, to the people that are employed to answer these types of questions.

I would think the manager of the resident priority program could clarify to us the BCWF's stance on if hunters should retain the head, hide and paws or just hand them over.
Then again it's not a real big issue if 170 resident grizzly hunts turn into a handful of grizzly steak hunts.

[jassmine]

This is all a distraction, though:

Well you are the one who initially brought it up and continue to complain about the quality of a journal that an article was published in. You disagree with the something in the particular article (methodology? analysis? interpretation?) without providing any real basis on why you disagree with it's publication.

I'm not in the biology field, and I haven't looked into how Thomson Reuters constructs their list, but I won't concede that an average of three citations per document over 2 years a good journal makes.

So how many citations per 2 years makes it a good journal? What is your cut-off and how did you get there? Despite saying that you are not in biology you remain pretty adamant that Biology Letters is not a good journal. This would in fact mean that someone who you agreed does fairly good research (Mark Boyce) has published his latest research in some even less impressive journals :

Journal - Impact Factor

Ecology and Society - 2.77
Ursus - 0.971
Forest Ecology and Management - 2.826
Environmental reviews - 3.196
Plos One - 2.86 (highlight of my career so far but wasn't near the first author)
Ecosphere - 2.287

Are these journals in the same low quality class as Biology Letters?

[Xenomorph]

I'm liking what Weaver is saying, BCWF not being included in the talks before making a populist move. Listening to the podcast as it goes.

[IronNoggin]

I'm liking what Weaver is saying, BCWF not being included in the talks before making a populist move. Listening to the podcast as it goes.

I'll "like" it a hell of a lot more should he Man Up and vote against this ludicrousness!

Cheers,
Nog

[ACE]

I'll 'like' it a hell of a lot more should he Man Up and vote against this ludicrousness!

For an educated man ...... maybe he's not all that smart ?
Weaver is a disappointment for sure ...

[Xenomorph]

I'll "like" it a hell of a lot more should he Man Up and vote against this ludicrousness!

Cheers,
Nog

I sure hope so.

Oh, Gene from Surrey saying he's one of the few people in the city eating bear ...I so doubt it.

[TreeStandMan]

You disagree with the something in the particular article (methodology? analysis? interpretation?) without providing any real basis on why you disagree.

Not true, I've mentioned several weaknesses of this paper, however methodology and analysis are indeed a problem here. It seems to be starting from the premise that hunters are egotistical killers of happy woodland creatures. This is a cultural / moral argument, one I'm willing to discuss, but Raincoast dishonestly dresses this moral argument up as science. Again, Raincoast is the one characterizing this as scientific on their website, so it deserves to be judged as such. So, first of all this shoddy paper is based on other shoddy papers: Darimont cites himself three times, an excellent way to hack impact factor, by the way, and a practice that a good editorial board would weed out. Second, there are factual errors: carnivores are not inedible, as he claims. Third, and most important, his hypothesis that "costly signalling model to explain[s] any big-game hunting" isn't ever tested, is barely observational, and entirely unempirical. Put another way: his sample population is full of straw men. Science is based on empirical evidence, not conjecture informed by motivated reasoning.

But i'm still wondering about the question I asked earlier:

I'd be interested to know what your assessment of this article is. I'd also be interested to know your feelings about the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation.

I'm happy to continue this conversation after you address this, other than that I don't see what's to be gained.

[jassmine]

Not true, I've mentioned several weaknesses of this paper, however methodology and analysis are indeed a problem here.

Well I'm not quite sure that you completely understand the paper or read it properly. If you did you would understand that it is not a research article.
There is no methodology or analysis section in the paper. It's not an research paper, it's an opinion letter submission and is indicated as such by the journal.

Not sure how they are dressing this up as science? There are a number of papers regarding costly signalling and they use the relevant references to demonstrate this:
Bliege Bird R, Smith E, Bird, DW . 2001 The hunting handicap: costly signaling in human foraging strategies.Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 50, 9–19.
Smith EA, Bliege Bird R, Bird DW . 2003 The benefits of costly signaling: Meriam turtle hunters. Behav. Ecol. 14,116–126.
Bliege Bird R, Smith EA . 2005 Signaling theory, strategic interaction, and symbolic capital. Curr. Anthropol. 46,221–248.
Hawkes K, Bliege, Bird R . 2002 Showing-off, handicap signaling, and the evolution of men's work. Evol. Anthropol. 11, 58–67.