CANMORE – More than 235 grizzly bears have died at the hands of humans in Alberta over the past decade.
While the human-caused deaths for 2023 and so far in 2024 are not yet known, the province quietly released the 2013-22 human-caused mortality statistics for the threatened species last week, showing 57 of the 235 were killed by the agency responsible for bear management over that period.
There has been an upswing in the number of bears killed for management or public safety reasons in recent years – nine in 2022, eight in 2021, eight in 2020, and 10 in 2019 – but the numbers are substantially less than Forestry and Parks Minister Todd Loewen cited when establishing a targeted hunt of so-called problem bears this summer.
“When the new changes to the Wildlife Act came out, he was saying we’re removing 20 conflict grizzlies a year,” said Banff-Kananaskis MLA Sarah Elmeligi, who is also a bear biologist.
“How do we trust him when even his own data from his own ministry is not supporting the things that he was saying in July?”
Grizzly bears are a threatened species in Alberta and a hunting ban has been in place for almost 20 years.
There are between 856 and 973 grizzlies in the province, according to the government’s latest count in 2021, a number that falls short of the recovery objective of 1,000 mature individuals.
Although the agency killings of bears for public safety reasons are significantly fewer than suggested by Minister Loewen, those numbers have been increasing in recent years.
“We need to be asking if there is a pattern in government where we’re quicker to jump to euthanasia as a management action than we were before. And if that's the case, why?” Elmeligi said.
“Where is that pressure coming from? Is it based on science, is it based on conflict rates increasing, or is it just based on a minister that wants to shoot grizzly bears?”
Jay Honeyman, who was a provincial human-wildlife conflict specialist for about a decade before his retirement in spring 2022, said the grizzly bear population is fairly healthy and expanding eastward, where there is potential for more conflicts with landowners.
He said he suspects that is in part leading to more euthanized grizzly bears rather than relocations, primarily sub-adult and adult male grizzly bears, while there is also not as much proactive work happening in more recent years.
“If there is more systems in place to reduce conflict, we wouldn't be moving or destroying that many bears, right?” he said.
“We’re going back to the good, old traditional way of dealing with bears, which is trap and move as opposed to preventing in the first place.”
Alberta’s grizzly bear recovery strategy, which was updated in 2020, recommended hiring regional human-wildlife conflict specialists to be positioned in areas of high need and with high human-grizzly bear conflict.
The idea was to support Alberta WildSmart projects, work closely with stakeholders affected by grizzly bear conflict, support volunteer groups working within communities, and work with Fish and Wildlife enforcement staff.
Under the plan’s recommendations, human-wildlife conflict specialists would also support the public in developing long-term solutions to promote public safety, secure grizzly bear attractants, and take proactive actions to prevent future conflict.
When Honeyman retired he was still the only human-wildlife conflict biologist in Alberta, covering a vast region from the Bow Valley north to Rocky Mountain House and south to the Canada-US border, but was assisted by community groups like Bow Valley WildSmart. His position has still not been filled.
Honeyman said much of his decade-long work focused on increasing tolerance for bears in the so-called support zone for grizzly bear recovery.
“That’s where landowners are having issues with bears and property damage and killing livestock, busting into grain bins and knocking beehives over,” he said.
The answer to that is simple, said Honeyman. Secure food sources for bears by putting up electric fences to protect livestock pastures, getting bear-proof grain and garbage bins, and removing calorie-rich fruit from trees.
“All of this conflict is predominantly 95 per cent food-related, and if you secured the food, you wouldn't have the conflict,” he said.
Meanwhile, Elmeligi worries the human-caused mortality statistics alone don’t paint a transparent picture of the circumstances that led to the management destruction of bears.
“It’s fine to put some numbers in a table, but the crux of this is under what circumstances are we removing grizzly bears from the population,” she said.
“What age? Sex class? Where? What kinds of conflict were they involved in that led to the decision to remove them from the population?” she added.
“We don’t have that information and that information is pretty critical. Co-existence is possible, I mean we do it in the Bow Valley every day.”
That said, Elmeligi indicated there are situations where euthanizing grizzly bears is the only option to maintain public safety.
“Yes, those situations exist, and I think that’s just a consequence of living with large carnivores,” she said.
“There will always be times when the conflict risk is too high and that is the only management action that makes sense to maintain public safety.”
On Sept. 1, Alberta Fish and Wildlife Enforcement Services (FWES) received a report from the RCMP regarding a bow hunter who was attacked by a female grizzly bear with cubs near the hamlet of Madden, about 45 km northwest of Calgary.
The individual, who was in a forested area at the time, sustained serious but non-life-threatening injuries.
Following further investigation, FWES determined through DNA samples that the bear was also responsible for the death of University of Calgary Professor David Lertzman while he was out for a jog in 2021 near the village of Waiparous.
However, Lertzman's widow, Sarah Lertzman, insists it was not a bear attack, but rather her husband was surprised by an encounter and “they both went over an embankment, where his head hit a tree," she commented on a Postmedia story. "Yet, people insist it was an attack.”
Fish and wildlife officers have been actively working to find the bear since the Madden encounter, including setting numerous traps and deploying low-flying aircraft.
“I don't know what they’re going do with this particular bear…it’s also a female with cubs, right?” Elmeligi said.
“I will say that it is not uncommon across jurisdictions in North America that if a bear kills a human, that bear is typically euthanized. That is pretty standard management response to a fatality from an attack.”
Elmeligi said the bear attack in Madden is a stark reminder of the nuances associated with bear encounters and why trained professionals should be handling these situations.
She said the minister’s decision to allow licensed members of the public to kill so-called problem bears under changes to the Wildlife Act is “wholly inappropriate” and “really problematic.”
“A Fish and Wildlife officer has undergone years of training to be able to look at the nuance in the situation and make a decision of what management response to pursue based on what is best for the bear and what is best for the community,” she said.
“It makes no sense scientifically, but also when you look at the specifics of these situations and the nuance that's involved, you really start to see why a professional needs to handle that, not just Joe with a hunting licence.”
The Outlook has been seeking information and an interview from the province since Sept. 4; however, has been bounced between Alberta Environment and Protected Areas and Alberta Forestry and Parks and still had no response by press time despite several attempts.
Of the 235 human-caused grizzly bear mortalities, the statistics also show two grizzlies died during capture and handling, 66 were struck by vehicles, 23 were killed in self-defence, and six were killed when mistaken for a black bear. Poachers killed another 58 and the legal Treaty harvest took 23.
For Elmeligi, the number of human-caused grizzly bear deaths is troubling news for the threatened species.
“There is a grizzly bear recovery plan, which inherently means we want more grizzly bears on the landscape,” she said.
“But when we have human-caused mortality that's high, you have to wonder, how does that affect the overall recovery of the population?”
