Grizzly bear Study

[duffy4]

Saw a really interesting Power point presentation on the Grizzly population study going on along the east slopes and NW Alberta(grizzly habitat in Alberta)

The first interesting thing was a map of North America showing the traditional historic range of the Grizzly Bear. Then the present Range, which I'm sure you would all agree is much much smaller. Looking at todays Grizzly range you see that Alaska,Yukon, Westerly NWT, most all of BC and a sliver along the west side of Alberta is all that is left. Then a couple islands in the States.

The sliver along the west side of Alberta showed me that in the big picture of grizzly bears, Alberta only has a relatively small bit of grizzly range.

Then a map of just Alberta showing the area that had "Grizzly Habitat" with potential to hold bears. Fairly extensive DNA (Barbed wire around a lure scent)sites showed that there were probably no bears in a lot of the habitat on the eastern edge of the possible bear habitat. ROADS and agricultural and industrial developement along the eastern portion of "grizzly range" pretty well matched the area they found almost no bears.

In the area on the west side of the bears range there were pockets of higher bear density. But over all there was not a really large number of Grizz in Alberta.

In the "scientists" summation he said something like this. There is an area on the east side of the Grizzly range that could and should have grizzly bears living in it. They are not there because of a number of reasons (human disturbance, poaching, native hunting etc.). If we can "overcome" these factors that are keeping bears away, then we can have a lot more bears in Alberta. But we need a surplus population of bears on the western front who can move east into that habitat. So even though there may be enough bears in the west to have a very small hunt, it may be better to not kill any bears now so there will be many more bears down the road so a greater surplus of bears will be spread over a greater area.

So if you saw 6 bears last year in a pocket where you only saw 1 three years ago, it does not mean that the population in Alberta is up. And shooting one or two bears this year may mean that all the bear hunting Alberta will ever amount to is to be able to shoot one or two bears a year from now on.

Robin in Rocky

[Grizzly Adams]

I really like that term "overcome", political speak for we really should do something, but we don't know what to do and if we did, the Will do do so, would be lacking. In the pre Whiteman era, Grizzlies followed the buffalo herds as far east as Manitoba, but I don't think anybody wants to go back to those times either. Was this a one time presentation Robin, or will it be available for the rest of us, to see too?
Grizz

[duffy4]

"overcome" was the word I chose as I was paraphrasing the speaker. I put it in quotes as I wasn't sure it was the right word to use.

Access in one big problem. It leads to human pressure and poaching opportunity. However the public seems to think that once a road is into an area that the public has the right to go there. If gates get put on resource roads I hear people complaining that the companies staff are getting a private fishing and hunting area and "thats not fair".

Not sure if the Grizzly study talk is something put on much. I would definately recomend that the AF&GA request it for the conference next year.

Sundre F&G awards and Banquet coming up April 19th I see. I might make it down to see how they put on their due.

Robin in Rocky

[fickell]

I am sick and tired of DE CITIE FOLK TALKING about what is going about i n the bush in alberta most of you spend about as much time out there as i do on the can 1-2 3 weeks a year I live my life there and you have the balls to tell me that bears are in bad shape not at all I could take any who have the cahoonas to face grizz face to face for a RARE pic any time you want and then tell me they are scarce come on get off the anti wagon

[flower]

I was just finishing up the James Gary Shelton Books on Bears. I find it interesting that Biologists and he have similar views and some things but are at complete opposites on another. I guess it show that it is really hard to find good accuarte information (not saying that what has been given isnt accurate).

What I am wondering is what is holding capacity of Grizzly bears in Alberta? By Holding Capacity, I mean what is a sustainable amount of bears? Then I would like to know where Alberta is in comparison with it grizzly bear population? This is just for my own knowledge as I am unaware and trying to become more informed.

Thanks

[Grizzly Adams]

Originally Posted by fickell

I am sick and tired of DE CITIE FOLK TALKING about what is going about i n the bush in alberta most of you spend about as much time out there as i do on the can 1-2 3 weeks a year I live my life there and you have the balls to tell me that bears are in bad shape not at all I could take any who have the cahoonas to face grizz face to face for a RARE pic any time you want and then tell me they are scarce come on get off the anti wagon

We's City Folk?

[The Elkster]

Great there's bears out there! Wow what a concept. Why don't we quit trying to play God and let mother nature maintain the balance...

Fickell I have met a lot of "country" folk that haven't a clue also but whom also don't have the sense to realize that. Keep in mind that many city folk are ex-country folk. Not all were born and raised in a mall with a video game controller for a soother. Many just left the country to educate themselves about the bigger picture past their front window.

Who was the presenter and where did you get to see the presentation.

These are the kinds of people that have to get to Fish and Game meetings and get this info out to the community. I think to many times these studies go on with great intentions but the only access that most of the hunting communties get to them are on second hand accounts like we're getting here. I'm not sure if there is a bear issue in Alberta or not, a lot of people spending time in the bush seem to see a lot of bears I've run into a couple myself, and a lot of professionals say the bears are in trouble. Well if that is correct then these people should be encouraged to come to every F&G meeting and present there studies so people can see how they have come to these conclusions. The bear issues in this province are the classic problems of anecdotal evidence versus scientific evidence and considering these studies are more than likely funded in no small part by the hunting community in Alberta I think it is imperative that these presentations get out as much as possible.

I agree MAV.

Take a potential wildlife management issue like Grizzlies. Add a bunch of emotion. Fluff it up with infomercials and tv stars touting words like threatened and endanged. Add a science community that is hurting for proper funding. Add ranchers who have to co-exist. Add the hunting community. Add development pressures.

What do you get? The perfect political storm.

A hunting community that wants to get information. Hunters want bears so they have hunting opportunities, and to prove it are willing to fund research.

A research community that has found a new source of research money. Saving threatened bears generates more research dollars than monitoring a healthy population.

Ranchers that are less willing to work with SRD and others to do things above board. Ralph's shoot shovel and shut up is the new management tool.

Non hunting groups lapping up the need to save bears. It makes them feel good as they drive their BMW out to there vacation property in former bear habitat.
.

The thing that bothers me most about this whole deal is that hunters who are actively trying to help in this whole process, are the first to be penalized. I do not know the answers, but more information from our researchers might be a good start.

[Okotokian]

Originally Posted by fickell

I am sick and tired of you f---DE CITIE FOLK TALKING about what is going about i n the bush in alberta most of you spend about as much time out there as i do on the can 1-2 3 weeks a year I live my life there and you have the balls to tell me that bears are in bad shape not at all I could take any who have the cahoonas to face grizz face to face for a RARE pic any time you want and then tell me they are scarce come on get off the anti wagon

I guess Rocky Mountain House is the big city to this guy. Take a pill, calm down. You do know how to deliver a reasoned argument though

And can we stop the the "city folk" bashing? It's usually delivered with as much evidence and knowledge as if I were to say that everyone who lives in the country is a hick with three teeth who married his sister.

[Grizzly Adams]

Originally Posted by fickell

I am sick and tired of CITIE FOLK TALKING about what is going about i n the bush in alberta most of you spend about as much time out there as i do on the can 1-2 3 weeks a year I live my life there and you have the balls to tell me that bears are in bad shape not at all I could take any who have the cahoonas to face grizz face to face for a RARE pic any time you want and then tell me they are scarce come on get off the anti wagon

Does this count?
Grizz

[Grizzly Adams]

Originally Posted by MAV

Who was the presenter and where did you get to see the presentation.

These are the kinds of people that have to get to Fish and Game meetings and get this info out to the community. I think to many times these studies go on with great intentions but the only access that most of the hunting communties get to them are on second hand accounts like we're getting here. I'm not sure if there is a bear issue in Alberta or not, a lot of people spending time in the bush seem to see a lot of bears I've run into a couple myself, and a lot of professionals say the bears are in trouble. Well if that is correct then these people should be encouraged to come to every F&G meeting and present there studies so people can see how they have come to these conclusions. The bear issues in this province are the classic problems of anecdotal evidence versus scientific evidence and considering these studies are more than likely funded in no small part by the hunting community in Alberta I think it is imperative that these presentations get out as much as possible.

Agree absolutely. A lot of times these presentations seem to follow a route and it's to our best advantage, wether we agree or not, and go to see them. What comes up in Rocky, seems to show up in Sundre, a lot of the time.
Grizz

[bearbait]

why is there no mention of the northern populations???im guessing its alot higher then where there doing thhis study..im not sure the sky is falling yet...seen quite a few grizz in my area last year and alot more sign.they need to do an accurate assessment of the whole province..

[Kev]

The project is progressing in stages, they started in Hinton, worked south, then north. Not sure what the status is now, but the Foothills Model Forest website probably has that info.

[Stinky Coyote]

any numbers given in this study?

best i've found so far is the 'official' count done in 88 of 588 bears, next best i've found that seems to go with the flow on the amount of bear activity the people who've spent alot of time in the bush from 88 to now seems to be the fish and game estimate of 968 in 2002.....and of course the population goal of 1000 bears considering the small amount of 'bear habitat' Alberta has....

so 6 yrs later, more encounters than every and more reports from those spending the time out there since 88 etc. leads me to lean more towards that info than the 'there's only 500 bears out there' bull i keep hearing from the animal rights nuts.....can't tell you which one is right but it sure sounds like one group has a much better handle on it than the other....and much more honest intentions also

would love to see an official count done to put things to rest and determine how many tags we should be allowed to keep them nearest 1000 again....instead of this blind 'we don't know so no more shooting em'.....if no more shooting them then hopefully they are working on finding out the number forsure????? hopefully?????

Duffy any chance you could let us all know who this guy was that gave the presentation, some of us would like to see these results and come up with an informed position on how this is going to ultimately influence our provincial stance on grizzly bear management.

[Big Bull]

Could it be Gord Stenhouse with the Foothills Model Forest Grizzly Bear Program? I have been to three or four of his presentations here in Jasper, and would recommend anyone that has an interest in bears to go see one of his talks. Sometimes the research students will bore you to death with their stats, but Stenhouse has the ability to keep everyones attention, and he has been doing this for a long time. At the time, all of his research was being done south of highway 16 along the eastern slopes of the Rockies. Here is a link to info about the the project
http://www.fmf.ab.ca/pa_GB.html#contacts
He doesn't come off as anti-hunting, just states what percentage of bears were killed by different means. I believe he lost his position with the provincial government for not bending their way.

Thanks Big Bull I'll see if I can get in touch with him to find out if he is doing another presentation any time soon.

[MountainTi]

Originally Posted by bearbait

why is there no mention of the northern populations???im guessing its alot higher then where there doing thhis study..im not sure the sky is falling yet...seen quite a few grizz in my area last year and alot more sign.they need to do an accurate assessment of the whole province..

Just my opinion! I have worked in the oilpatch for the last 20 yrs. All my summer work is and has been in the foothills/mountains from southern alberta to northern BC. In the fall when not working am usually out west hiking and riding around the mountains looking for a sheep. All that I have noticed about the grizzly bear population is that they sure seem to be on the rise, and this isn't in one small area, but a rather large one. Another thing I have also noticed is that the last couple of years, the bears sure seem to be getting a lot braver, sure don't seem to run away at the first sight of man anymore. And as for the northern population of grizzly, my Dad lives west of grande prairie, out elmworth way. If you want to get an earful, tell him that the bear numbers are declining. They are as thick up there as the black bears. Can't even hardly keep them off the home quarter, and he is a long ways from the foothils. Like I say, this is just my opinion and observations from someone who spends more time in the bush/mountains than most.

[duffy4]

Lots of things can happen with numbers. Just for fun,

Lets just say there were 1000 griz in all the avalible griz habitat in Alberta.

Then over a relatively short period of time 1/3 of the bears habitat was opened up with roads, pipelines, oil and gas facilities and cutblocks and quad trails and hunting camps and access for "unregulated hunting" and poaching. Lets say the griz population dropped as a result by 1/4.

So now there are 750 bears occupying 2/3 of the habitat that they used to.

The density in the reduced habitat would be higher and folks would be seeing "lots" of bears. However in reality the number of bears in Alberta would have gone down.

Now do we open a hunting season and harvest some bears because there are good numbers in a smaller area?

Or do we try to make some changes in the lost griz habitat and try to get bears back living in it so the population can expand to closer to what it was?(and some sustainable harvest would be possible)

The later is what Stenhouse was hinting we should do (but he was asking the question)

Robin in Rocky

[Copidosoma]

Originally Posted by duffy4

Lots of things can happen with numbers. Just for fun,

Lets just say there were 1000 griz in all the avalible griz habitat in Alberta.

Then over a relatively short period of time 1/3 of the bears habitat was opened up with roads, pipelines, oil and gas facilities and cutblocks and quad trails and hunting camps and access for "unregulated hunting" and poaching. Lets say the griz population dropped as a result by 1/4.

So now there are 750 bears occupying 2/3 of the habitat that they used to.

The density in the reduced habitat would be higher and folks would be seeing "lots" of bears. However in reality the number of bears in Alberta would have gone down.

Now do we open a hunting season and harvest some bears because there are good numbers in a smaller area?

Or do we try to make some changes in the lost griz habitat and try to get bears back living in it so the population can expand to closer to what it was?(and some sustainable harvest would be possible)

The later is what Stenhouse was hinting we should do (but he was asking the question)

Robin in Rocky

Duff, your scenario makes too much sense. Can't be true.

[MountainTi]

Originally Posted by duffy4

Lots of things can happen with numbers. Just for fun,

Lets just say there were 1000 griz in all the avalible griz habitat in Alberta.

Then over a relatively short period of time 1/3 of the bears habitat was opened up with roads, pipelines, oil and gas facilities and cutblocks and quad trails and hunting camps and access for "unregulated hunting" and poaching. Lets say the griz population dropped as a result by 1/4.

So now there are 750 bears occupying 2/3 of the habitat that they used to.

The density in the reduced habitat would be higher and folks would be seeing "lots" of bears. However in reality the number of bears in Alberta would have gone down.

Now do we open a hunting season and harvest some bears because there are good numbers in a smaller area?

Or do we try to make some changes in the lost griz habitat and try to get bears back living in it so the population can expand to closer to what it was?(and some sustainable harvest would be possible)

The later is what Stenhouse was hinting we should do (but he was asking the question)

Robin in Rocky

In my statement I am referring to a couple of areas that do not have that much in common. The first is my sheep hunting area. There is definately no new access being developed or opened up there, if anything a lot of it has been restricted, resulting in a lot less activity in the area. So I supposed I can see the increase in bear numbers there, what with fewer people in there than ever before. The second area refers to the farmland around grande prairie/elmworth area. That area has been heavily populated for years and getting more so every year. So where are all these bears coming from. Heck, have even been having grizz problems around my place the last couple of years, and never used to. And this is a very populated area. Just my though on it, maybe I am wrong though.

[buck]

with any luck the closing of the grizz hunt will help the population recover so that in the future we can start to hunt them again i personally don't believe that hunting is the cause of the population drop but if we are lucky the grizz will respond here the same way the blacks did in Ontario as there is now bears where they haven't been before and lots of them but as others have stated maybe the loss of habitat and more people accsesing areas have pushed the bears farther back
i'm not sure on this but maybe some guys on here can say better but as an (EXAMPLE say they log 5miles out or put in a large quantity of oil wells and a bears main living area is in that spot then he has to move on and if he moves in to another bears turf he must move agian which may put them further and further in or out closer out to where we encounter them i'm not sure how many miles a grizz claims and if the sows will allow another sow in the area close to them or not)
I"M not attacking logging or oil and gas but anything that creates a large disturbance in one large area at once may be a factor as well in my opion
Is it not true that most grizz's were killed as porblem bears or in self defense then by hunters each year hunting them with a license
just my thoughts on this

[sow wester]

me and a couple friends went fly fishin last sunday on prarie creek north of the north fork road and saw some bear tracks we measured them it was a front paw track and it was 6'' by 6'' my buddy took a pic so when ne gets it developed il post it and see if you guys think its a griz
i thought it was how big can a black bear track get ?

[Okotokian]

Originally Posted by buck

with any luck the closing of the grizz hunt will help the population recover so that in the future we can start to hunt them again

I tend to support suspension until we have accurate numbers, but to me, it's really just a political issue for both sides. I believe ten bears were taken by hunters in 2005. I don't believe numbers like that harm the population to any great degree, nor will a suspension cause any great upsurge in numbers. Some hunters seem to view the hunt as as a political line in the sand, that even allowing one bear to be taken helps maintain an eroding right. Anti's push it for their own agenda, realizing that it really won't do that much for bear numbers I suspect.

Playing this game allows everyone to ignore the more pertinent cause and more painful solution... looking at habitat loss and resource development.

[altaberg]

Grizzly: "overcome" in my experience often means "we know a reasonably good solution but it isn't politically feasible"

Few weeks ago I was at a conference in the States and heard a really good talk by somebody who is probably one of the world's foremost experts on bears.
I'm not a wildlife biologist and this conference was about something else. The link was that some US Medical Device companies helped design monitors of vital signs into GPS tracking collars used on bears. That allows to know what the bears are doing and if they are stressed a lot. I think for the company it was more a PR thing.

Anyway, this talk was great. He talked about the 8 species of bears in the world, they status of each and the problems. He also talked a lot about population estimates because that's apparently a key problem everywhere.
Intersting to note that out of 8 bear species in the world 6 are endangered or threatened. The only one that isn't is the North American Black Bear.
The Brown Bear (European, Asian and Grizzly all the same species) has some locally threatened populations (most notably in the continental US) but overall is not threatened.

The guy also described all the methods ( and their shortcomings ) for estimating populations. From GPS collars and tracking, DNA analysis of hair samples (still expensive at $70/sample), mark and recatch and so on.
The latter they do for example in Minnesota with the help of the hunting community. They hang out baits laced with tetracycline (tetracycline is an antibiotic that stains teeth) and rely on hunters to turn in teeth for analysis.

Included in the methods for population estimate are interviews with locals, hunters, farmers but he cautioned that this usually is subjective and cannot be used as an independent method for population estimates. For example, in some places hunters will overestimate bear numbers on purpose so they are allowed to hunt and sell gallbladers, in other places in Malaysia they were told "no bears left" because the locals didn't want the creation of a new park.

After the talk I had the opportunity to talk to this guy for almost an hour and ask him about three specific things.

I asked him if he thought trophy hunting contributed to the conservation of bears. He responded, not only trophy hunting but any managed hunt helps because hunting gives an economic value to bears, hunters are interested in maintaining of a healthy population and a habitat to support it. He also said in his experience areas of the world with an established and well managed hunting culture do much better in controlling poaching.
Secondly I asked him a question that came up on this board a while ago.
Does hunting contribute to the survival of a species by changing the behaviour of the bears? (The bears would avoid humans and cause less problems if they are hunted actively and associate humans with trouble).
I also asked if there are any real scientific studies on this.
his response was that he believes this to be the case based on his personal experience. He wasn't aware of any real scientific study in North America but told me that in Europe there have been relevant studies on Brown Bears. Those became nocturnal in areas where they were heavily hunted, that is they respond to hunting pressure. Brown bears are usually not nocturnal animals.
I finally asked him about the pepper spray. In his opinion it is the best defense there is against bears in most cases and there are a number of studies now which back this up.

The guy made a lot of sense to me. It was a pleasure listening to him and he certainly had seen a lot of bears all over the world.

Better get back to work or I'm going to be here all night.

[Appletree]

*snip*

[altaberg]

Originally Posted by Appletree

Was that Dave Garshelis?

pm sent