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Stop BC's Grizzly Bear Trophy Hunt

Submitted by coastmtn on Thu, 02/25/2010 - 23:02

Please take a minute and add your name to a simple petition asking the BC government to stop its grizzly bear trophy hunt!

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/trophyhunt/

Grizzly Bear Hunting in BC

by Ian McAllister, founding director of Pacific Wild

There are few experiences as inspiring or as evocative of North American wilderness as the site of an adult grizzly foraging for clams along the inter tidal flats, or perhaps fishing the rapids of a pristine river teaming with spawning salmon. Yet as more and more international tourists discover the wonderful experience of viewing these beautiful mammals in their natural environment, British Columbia marks another dubious milestone in its checkered history of grizzly bear management.

In 2007, 430 grizzlies were killed in B.C., 363 of them by affluent, mostly American and European sport hunters, making last year the highest rate of hunter-caused mortality of this iconic bear since records have been kept. This sad statistic puts the lie to the provincial government’s own description of grizzlies as “perhaps the greatest symbol of the wilderness” whose “survival will be the greatest testimony to our environmental commitment.”

Conservationists and independent scientists have been saying for years that the continuation of the sport hunt in its current form reveals a provincial government sorely out of step with reality on three fronts - grizzly bear science, economics and public opinion. For decades management and regulation has been governed more by politics and received wisdom than by anything resembling sound scientific reasoning, despite the fact that COSWEIC (Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada), the federal Species at Risk Act (SARA) and the British Columbia Conservation Data Centre consider grizzlies a species of special concern.

Government policy makers continue to use flawed methodology, speculation and conjecture instead of peer-reviewed science to establish grizzly bear population estimates, they argue that grizzly bear hunting is important economically when it is increasingly evident that bears or worth more to the economy living than dead, and they say there is a social or historical imperative to maintain the hunt when it is obvious that a majority of British Columbians and international tourists would rather shoot bears with cameras than guns.

Imagine making a difference. The “Faltering Light” visual petition is a high quality book containing

an open letter to the BC government requesting that trophy hunting of bears is stopped,
essays from leading environmentalists,
sepia toned bear photographs and
YOUR SIGNATURES supporting the termination of the trophy hunt.

The book will be delivered to Premier Gordon Campbell & Environment Minister Barry Penner before the trophy hunt resumes in April.

The book will also be given to the Vancouver city archive as a record of every individual's historic contribution. So let's make history, record your name and join conservation photographer Andy Wright with founding supporters Simon Jackson (www.spiritbearyouth.org) Ian McAllister (www.pacificwild.org) and bear biologist Wayne McCrory (www.vws.org) to make this visual petition a significant creation that changes history and saves the magnificent bears of British Columbia.