The population of black bears in Ontario has seen significant decreases in some areas of the province, according to a new population survey conducted by government researchers, which increases concerns on the health of bears and the impact of hunting.
The research used DNA sampling to estimate the population of bears throughout the province. The population survey found significant decreases in bears populations in an area north of Sudbury, Ontario, and near Thunder Bay, Ontario. The decreases ranged between 20 and 40 percent, although there is uncertainty about exact percentages.
But the decreases at these levels were “probably related to humans, either through conflict or harvest,” said Joe Northrup, a research scientist at the Ministry of Natural Resources of Ontario, referring to the human conflicts and hunting of the irrelants. Shared details of the research with CBC News, which is based on previously published and pairs publications methodology.
In other parts of the province, the populations of bears remained stable or roses. The areas inside and around the Algonquin Provincial Park, approximately 300 kilometers north of Toronto, saw a 70 percent increase in bears, according to Northrup, who leads the massive effort to count black bears.
Bears are not considered threatened or endangered anywhere in the province, Northrup said, and the big question is what to do with new data.
The new population numbers add to the debate on the hunting of spring bears in Ontario, which for a long time has been a point of inflammation between the hunting and tourism sector and conservation groups.
There was no spring hunt during the last population count, but it was brought back as a pilot in 2015, after which the new count began. In 2021, the Ontario government caused spring hunting to be permanent, even when Bear’s defenders continued to raise concerns about their impact on the number of bears.
Telling the elusive black bears
Northrup is directed A laboratory At the University of Trent in Peterborough, Ontario, which investigates human impacts on a variety of wildlife such as elks, elks and bears.
For the Population Survey of black bears, the investigators established hundreds of 2017 to 2022 bait stations in Ontario, testing tens of thousands of DNA samples of bear hair collected from the stations in the mass effort. Then they compared the numbers with a previous sampling made in 2004 to 2011.
“We want to make sure that there are black bears for all the different social values and cultural values and ecological values that they provide for the inhabitants of Ontario,” Northrup said about the generally elusive species, which avoids humans and lives in thick forests.
Discovering how many bears the province is one thing, but Mark Ryckman, Wildlife Biologist and politics director at the Federation of Anglers and Ontario Hunters, says that a good starting point would be to discover how many bears the province wants to have.
“Without that information, the evidence of a population decrease is not very useful because we do not know what we want to do with that information,” he said.
Ryckman said the population objectives exist for mooseFor example, developed studying its importance for local culture and indigenous traditions, hunting and recreation and its impact on other species on the ecosystem.
With the objectives of the population, the government can take measures to achieve those objectives once after examining a species such as elce.
“Sometimes it is about increasing or reducing the harvest. Sometimes it is about adapting the proportion of bulls versus alces of cows that are harvested,” Ryckman said, adding without that population goal, the “complete image” was not yet available for black bears.
Spring Bear Hunt
Ontario has two seasons of bears hunting: spring hunting, which has begun and extends until June in parts of the province, and autumn hunting, which is actually larger. It is estimated that spring bear hunting contributes $ 50 million per year to the tourist economy of northern Ontario, and the current value is probably more, Ryckman said.
But spring hunt has been more controversial, because it is a time when the mother bears have young puppies. Mothers are vulnerable during this time because they are collecting food and taking care of them, while puppies are vulnerable because they are too young to survive if they lose their mother.
The concerns about the bears during this season led the government to cancel spring hunt in 1999. But the defense of hunters and tourism groups, which argue that hunting can be done sustainably while providing an impulse to the economy of northern Ontario, led to the province Bringing back in 2015.
Hunters are prohibited from killing female bears with puppies, but critics say that despite the rules, it is not easy to identify with precision a mother’s bear in nature, especially at the beginning of the season, when the puppies hide in a tree while the female bear wanders just by the forest, looking for food.
“From a distance, it is almost impossible to know if the bear is a woman, a mother with puppies or a young and small adult man,” said Mike Mcintosh, who directs a Bear sanctuary Near Huntsville, Ontario, who takes orphans separated from their mothers.
But Ryckman argues that hunters have options to accurately identify a mother. He says that most hunters use bait sites and control them over time, either in person or through paths.
Shane Moffatt, conservation campaigns and Defense Manager of Ontario Nature, said that bringing spring hunting back was “bad policy based on unstable science”, since the government does not have a complete image of its impacts on the population of bears.
“I think we pass the point of our society, given the global pressure on species worldwide, to take the attitude that significant reductions in the number of wild species are acceptable,” said Moffatt.
“It is really important that, when we see that species begin to decrease, we act at that time and we don’t expect until the situation gets worse.”
In a statement, Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources said there were no planned changes to prevail Bear Hunt this year, and that the data indicates that “the population of black bears is stable at the provincial level.”
“The Ministry continues to monitor black bears populations and harvest levels and use this information for the continuous review of the province’s policies for black bears management,” the ministry said.
Northrup said the Population Survey of Bee will become a regular monitoring program, where your team will review research sites and can track population changes over time. They will also use the data to better understand the movement patterns of the bears, all to help inform the government’s management policies in the future.
