Protection plan coming for threatened Alberta grizzlies, province says

The Alberta government says a long-awaited plan to help protect grizzly bears and their habitat is nearly ready, two years after the draft was completed.

“Grizzly bears need large tracks of contiguous habitat in order to recover,” Environment and Parks Minister Shannon Phillips said Wednesday. “We need to strike the balance in terms of what the priorities of the province are right now.”

She said conservation strategies already in place have focused on minimizing contact between wildlife and humans.

The grizzly plan will head to the Endangered Species Conservation Committee later this month for review, more than two years after the scheme was first released for public feedback in June 2016.

That feedback period was scheduled for just six weeks, so it remains unclear why implementation has been delayed.

The plan is intended to build on a five-year strategy launched in 2008, which the province heralded for boosting grizzly numbers.

The species was listed as threatened in Alberta in 2010 when it was determined there were only about 700 left.

In recent years, numbers have been pegged at more than 1,100 across Alberta.

Poaching remains a problem, with statistics showing at least 39 grizzly bears have been killed illegally since a legal hunt ended in 2005.

In September, an Alberta man was charged with killing a collared grizzly bear and ordered to pay nearly $13,000 in fines.

The three-year-old male grizzly, dubbed bear No. 141 by researchers, had its collar activated in Jasper National Park. It had stopped working near Edson, about 200 kilometres west of Edmonton.

“We’re anxious to see the plan put into force,” Stephen Legault, program director for the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, said in an interview last week. “This is something that Alberta has been working on ... for more than a decade.”

In 2016, the organization criticized the draft plan for not going far enough, arguing for an additional 14,650 square kilometres of protected habitat.

We’re anxious to see the plan put into force. This is something Alberta has been working on ... for more than a decade.

The group also raised concerns around how the province will monitor habitat disturbances.

Legault said he wants to see the plan in place ahead of the 2019 provincial election.

“Nobody has a crystal ball,” he said. “We think it’s a smart idea to ensure we wrap up pieces of business ... while we have a government that has made formal commitments to protecting (grizzlies).”

Phillips said the plan will be finalized soon, but wouldn’t give further details.

“The Alberta mountains and foothills are the eastern edge of a wave of extinction that’s been happening for almost 200 years,” Legault said. “We have an important obligation to hold the line.”