They are common news subjects at this time of the year, generally as a result of interaction with humans and urban areas. But how common is the black bear in BC?
The defenders of wildlife say that the answer is far from being clear, and better data is required to help and understand the species, many of which are destroyed as a result of having become accustomed to human foods.
“I want greater pressure on the government to address this great knowledge gap that we simply don’t know how many we have,” said the registered professional biologist Helen Davis, of Artemis Wildlife Consultants.
“We don’t know if we are hunting too many, if we are killing too many conflicts.”
The 2001 government materials say that there are between 120,000 and 160,000 black bears throughout the province, and “although bears numbers vary from year to year and habitats available for them are slowly reducing due to the development of the earth, the species is currently not rare, threatened or endangered in British columbia.”
Biologists like Davis, who, together with the first nations, want dense bear in ancient forests protected with legislation throughout the province, say there could be a wrong idea that a key species with ecological and cultural value is abundant when the data is outdated or even doubles.
“The estimate from 120,000 to 160,000 is repeated again and again in the press,” Davis said about apparently ubiquitous stories about the black bears that become annoyed by bears due to conflict with humans.
“And yet, if you ask the government where that number comes from, they cannot produce any data to support that.”
Davis and others, such as the first nation of Kwakiutl, want BC to follow the example of Ontario and the Washington state in more modern surveys to estimate with greater precision the numbers of black bears to help handle the species and the ecological connection with the landscape in which they thrive.
“The bear is part of our origin stories through some families,” said Walas’ NtoMugis, a hereditary boss with the first nation of Kwakiutl whose English name is David Mungo Knox.
“And why it is so important to talk about the bear and talk about the old growth because without the bears, the old salmon corpses would not carry to the old roots of the mother trees that are 1,000 year old trees,” he added, referring to how Salmon corpses act as trees in the forests.
Provincial statistics show hundreds destroyed every year, with more than 8,000 in a period of 14 years. Black bears are also harvested annually during two hunting seasons, which, on average, results in 5,000 more dead bears every year.
Another pressure on animals comes from having their roots in destroyed trees when registering old growth forests. Ladies are only protected in Haida Gwaii and the Great Bear Sairest, and by some registration companies.
Provincial scientists say that, while an approach in the past has been in the brown bears, their number and a prohibition of trophies hunting, there is a job to guarantee the health of black bears populations.
Tony Hamilton was the great carnivorous scientist of the province from 1982 until he retired in 2018. He worked in the original widely mentioned estimate of the black bears populations.
It was carried out through a comparative classification of habitat quality in BC and assigning estimates of black bear densities per 100 or 1,000 square kilometers, he said.
Establish objectives for the animal
Hamilton also said that it is possible that the lower end of a population of black bears in BC can be 80,000, but emphasizes that a general population number may not be useful for management.
“Frankly, now I have the mind that the search for a single estimate of the population for a single point in time in BC is not something we should pursue,” he said. “On the other hand, I think we should focus on establishing objectives for the animal.”
It is something that its successor supports, and both say that the necessary resources to do a study of a massive and expensive population in the enormous diversity of BC ecosystems could better spend on the management of problems known as orphaned bears, human covers conflicts in rear courtyards and agricultural fields, while protecting the beast bear and the management of hunting for black bears.
“He puts it back to the question of … can we minimize the death tolls just because it is a good thing to do and not make these animals die in conflict?” Garth Mowat said, the great Current Carnivorous specialist of BC.
Mowat conducted a study, published in 2021, in an area of the Central Island of Vancouver that showed that black bears densities were 569 bears per 1,000 square kilometers, “which is higher than many black bears densities along the western coast of North America.”
The study also said that the average hunting rates (harvest) were “similar to other BC areas, within the ranges of neighboring jurisdictions, and generally within the reported sustainable limits.”
While defenders continue to press to obtain better data around black bears, all sides of the debate agree that BC residents must be aware of black bears and make their part to help avoid destroying them due to problems within our control.
