LET’S CARE FOR BEARS
Regardless of your opinions on hunting, it is cruel for the Alberta provincial government to euthanize bear cubs that are left orphaned during the hunting season, which began Sunday.
Wildlife rescue advocates have lobbied for years for permission to take in the animals. Their efforts appear to be winning over Alberta Environment and Parks, but so far, it remains a work in progress. The government has changed conditions for wildlife rehabilitation permits, but it hasn’t released the protocols that groups would be required to follow.
“We know there is evolving science around bear behaviour, human/wildlife conflict and safe rehabilitation techniques,” department spokesman Murray Langdon said last week in an emailed statement. “Alberta’s wildlife rehabilitation protocols have not been updated in some time, so we will look at them with fresh eyes. A review is underway.”
The review of procedures has been going on since at least last fall. That’s ample time for the government to restore protocols that were in place until 2010 that allowed private agencies to rehabilitate orphaned animals. Indeed, two months ago, the department indicated it hoped to have the changes in place by April 1.
Further delay isn’t acceptable. Alberta hunting regulations prohibit the shooting of a black bear under the age of one year, or a female black bear accompanied by a cub under one year. Such restrictions should largely prevent the existence of orphaned bear cubs, but when such unfortunate realities occur, Albertans have an obligation to deal with the animals humanely, not add insult to injury by having the cubs put down.
All Albertans — not the least of them, the caring people who want to tend to the orphaned cubs — should be upset with the government’s delays in making matters right.
“It doesn’t take that long to do a review, so something is going on,” says Lisa Dahlseide, who has rehabilitated animals with the Cochrane Ecological Institute.
“It’s unacceptable — you don’t kill orphaned animals when you have facilities and expertise ready to take them.”
Dahlseide and others like her are right. Certainly there’s the risk the orphaned bear cubs could become habituated to humans, but that’s true of bruins that live in the wild, too, and increasingly come into contact with people.
Experts who nurture the motherless cubs must do all they can to prepare the animals for a successful return to the wild, if possible. But the creatures, who’ve already suffered terrible adversity, deserve all the support we can provide them. We owe our wildlife that much.