Giving a nuisance grizzly one last chance

No. 148 could become more dangerous, write Lee Foote and Scott Nielsen.

Wildlife professionals spend most of their time working on wildlife protection, habitat improvement, public education, surveys and biodiversity management. Occasionally, their job requires them to remove or kill animals such as crop-raiding geese, diseased elk or, recently, a grizzly bear with socially unacceptable behaviours.

These actions generate a great sigh of relief from the people at risk and loud opposition from those whose ideology or location distances them from the issue.

Three conflict levels prompt the discussion of complete isolation or lethal force: High probability of injurious or lethal aggression toward humans; A behavioural pattern that is escalating toward No. 1; and consistent and unalterable behaviours that damage human property.

This week, the history of bear-management actions narrowed the options available for managing a six-yearold female grizzly in Alberta’s Bow Valley. This bear is wellknown by its former ear-tag number 148 and for years she delighted motorists in the area. She also represents one of the most important segments in Alberta’s expanding grizzly population: a female with high reproductive potential and an ability to live amicably near people.

Despite her infrequent warning woofs and even bluff charges, she has been given the benefit of the doubt the last two years. To reduce the risk, she was tagged and moved several times to remote areas of Banff National Park, as well as being the target of hundreds of behavioural-conditioning events applied by professionals using dogs, cracker shells, and rubber bullets. Although these tactics often work, they did not work on Bear 148.

Alberta Environment and Parks has responsibility for this bear and the safety of humans who come into contact with her on provincial property. Their spectrum of prudent management for human safety includes the possibility of hazing, moving or euthanizing her when human welfare is threatened.

History charts a worrisome escalation in the risks that Bear 148 poses. She was raised by a mother who taught her to tolerate moderate levels of human approach and, as 148 has grown older, her fear of humans has diminished. In fairness, not all hikers, bikers, photographers, motorists and campers make good decisions either. People hike quietly, walk dogs off leash, camp messily, wear headphones, get out of cars in bear jams, approach too closely and provoke bears with shouts. Plus there are the smells of human food.

When No. 148 was previously trapped and moved, it only took a few days for her to return. This July, she was involved in eight human conflicts in a four-day period, including approaching humans, chasing people on a trail and taking a swipe at a dog.

Cubs are likely in 2018. A grizzly mother with no fear of humans is a ticking bomb.

An obvious issue with managing a wild animal is social guilt over our role in the development of humanbear conflict. We seek compromise and investment in maintaining their presence, so government and conservation groups continue to install multi-million-dollar bear crossings, bear-proof garbage bins, fenced dumps and tens of thousands of brochures and signs.

At some point, options run out for individual bears. For now, the sanctity of human life still exceeds the high value we place on the lives of individual bears. Behaviours tolerated begrudgingly in federal parks are not currently acceptable outside those boundaries.

Consider the provincial and federal biologists in the grinding crucible of decisionmaking. Here, they are being drawn ever closer to the possibility of using the last option — euthanization.

Bear 148 is getting one last, and expensive, chance as she has been trapped, and helicoptered from the Bow Valley to more remote habitat in Alberta’s Kakwa region in the northern Rockies.

Previous research has shown that while survival odds diminish with such a move, they are not eliminated.

Fingers are crossed.

Lee Foote and Scott Nielsen are professors of conservation biology at the U of A. Foote is the co-editor of the book Inuit, Polar Bears and Conservation Hunting and Nielsen is a grizzly bear researcher who studies bear survival in human environments. This column has been edited for length.