The Grizzly Hunt

Posted by Emma Lehmberg on Monday, March 08, 2010

Think the North American Grizzly is a powerful, almost-invincible animal? Think again. For such large beasts, these bears are surprisingly vulnerable to the environmental impact of the most populous mammal on earth: us. They suffer from overfishing - because they depend on the salmon spawn and they're losing more habitat as urban cities sprawl across valuable forest.

Yet now there's another worry for conservationists: the grizzly bear trophy hunt. According to the David Suzuki Foundation, the population of bears is severely threatened by this activity. Over the last 30 years 11,000 grizzlies have been killed in and around Provincial Parks and protected areas in B.C.

The hunt is by no means a new practice, but because of other factors like climate change, pollution and overfishing, conservationists and activists have begun to focus on it as doubly detrimental to grizzly populations. In the natural world, where so much is uncontrollable, it is easy to see why there is suddenly increased attention on the trophy hunt, precisely because it can be stopped

Interestingly enough, the most strenuous regulations on killing the bears, and selling grizzly products are outside of Canada, where grizzlies are either extinct or endangered. And more troubling is the fact that most trophy hunters come from these countries (usually either the U.S. or Europe) to hunt the bears.

Fortunately, there is something you can do. The David Suzuki Foundation is holding a letter writing campaign addressed to the Premier of B.C. and his Environment Minister. If you go to the David Suzuki Foundation website there is a page dedicated to just that.