The Alberta government isn’t ruling out lifting a near 20-year ban on hunting grizzly bears, a divisive issue between conservationists, politicians, and hunters. Forestry and Parks Minister Todd Loewen says all options are on the table following several recent bear attacks and close encounters in the province. Grizzlies are being spotted in parts of the province they haven’t inhabited in more than a century. “There’s no plans at this time yet. We don’t want to take anything off the table. I think it would be irresponsible not to have all options on the table so we’re looking at everything,” Loewen said. There has been a ban on hunting grizzly bears in Alberta since 2006. Last year, the government introduced a targeted hunt on problem grizzly bears through its Wildlife Management Responder Network, which the minister also hasn’t ruled out expanding in some capacity. “We’ve got a pretty good program going on right now and are working with landowners to make sure they’re not making attractants into the yard and we have a number of programs going right now and we’ll see how they all work out,” he said. Loewen says there are several factors that would have to be considered to lift the ban or expand the current problem grizzly bear program, including the number of bears in the province and recent grizzly-human interactions, and their expansion into the foothills. “We’ve definitely seen a rise in the number of bear sightings and people running into them and probably what’s most alarming is we’re seeing bears where they haven’t traditionally been,” Loewen said. In October, a hunter was seriously injured in an attack south of Cochrane , and in August a man was attacked while fishing near Cardston. ‘Not managing anything with hunting’ There has been pushback to the idea of lifting a hunt on grizzly bears, over concerns about what sort of an impact a full hunt would have on the animal population. The most recent public data on grizzly bear populations are from 2021, based on 2018 surveys. They estimate the population ranges somewhere between 800 and 1,000 bears. “First of all, it’s not a prey animal that you hunt for food,” said Kevin Van Tighem, a former superintendent of Banff National Park, conservationist, hunter, and author. “And secondly, they’re one of the least reproductively, successful animals on the continent. “Very few animals breed more slowly than grizzly bears,” he added. “So, there’s not much of a buffer for making a mistake when you start allocating bears to be killed by people.” Van Tighem says bears are not a prey animal typically hunted for their meat, but rather for bragging rights and suggests lifting a hunting ban would more likely be motivated for commercial trophy hunting. “There’s big money because people who are attracted to hunting bears are prepared to pay big money, it’s a rare commodity,” he said. “We might go that way but it will be for all the wrong reasons.” Loewen rejects the notion that the consideration to lift a ban on hunting was connected to trophy hunting. “Not at all. It all has to do with management and managing negative interactions with people,” he said. The president of the Alberta Professional Outfitters Society agrees with and supports the relaxing of hunting regulations around bears. “I see it simply as managing Alberta’s wildlife in a sound and scientific-fact way,” said Corey Jarvis. He believes the pushback against many hunting regulations is often “emotionally driven” and says there is a false narrative that hunters and outfitters are not also concerned with conservation. “I think our wildlife in Alberta, you know, it’s managed under some pretty tight guidelines and tight restrictions,” he said. “The same would have to be true with any kind of a hunt on grizzly bears, where it would be a very, very limited and restricted number, so it’s not at all or in any way an opportunity where people could just go out and annihilate grizzly bears.” Van Tighem says he was skeptical that a grizzly hunt would reduce negative grizzly-human interactions. “There’s no management objective that you can really achieve by hunting grizzly bears that you can’t better achieve in other ways,” he said. “A lot of the rationale that is put forward for hunting grizzly bears is about the idea that they’re dangerous and that if we shoot more bears, we’ll manage the population and it will reduce the risk to livestock or people. “That’s just not been proven up. The most dangerous bears are the ones that are scared of us,” he said. “You’re not managing anything with hunting. All you’re doing is providing an opportunity for people who want to hunt a bear.” Complaint filed Sarah Elmeligi, NDP MLA for Banff-Kananaskis, also believes the minister is laying the groundwork to reintroduce a grizzly bear hunt in Alberta, not out of public safety but to benefit hunters. “I’m concerned that’s always been the ministers’ objective. The minister has made some very questionable decisions around hunting and trapping for all kinds of species including grizzly bears, so I have always been concerned that that is what he’d like to see on the Alberta landscape,” she said. In a video posted on social media, she asked Albertans to share experiences with grizzlies that didn’t end negatively to show not all interactions end badly. “Statistically you’re more likely to be struck by lightning twice than attacked by a grizzly bear so we know the statistics show that grizzly bear attacks are very rare,” she said. Elmeligi also recently introduced a petition in the Alberta legislature on behalf of the Alberta Wilderness Association (AWA), urging the minister to reconsider the current grizzly bear conflict program. She also says she shares the AWA’s calls for the ethics commissioners to investigate Loewen, arguing that UCP policies over hunting and trapping in the province benefits select stakeholders, including his own family’s outfitting business. In response, Loewen says he’s previously been cleared of having a conflict of interest. “The ethics commissioner has looked at all the aspects of the decisions I’m making and finds there is no problem at all with what I’m doing so if you can’t attack he message you attack the messenger and that’s what’s going on here,” he said. CTV has reached out to Alberta’s ethics commissioner for comment on the formal complaint against Loewen and are waiting to hear back.
