First it was the giant panda, then the polar bear. Now it seems that the grizzly bear is the latest species to face impending disaster.
A furious row has erupted in Canada with conservationists desperately lobbying the government to suspend the annual bear-hunting season following reports of a sudden drop in the numbers of wild bears spotted on salmon streams and key coastal areas where they would normally be feeding.
The government has promised to order a count of bears, but not until after this year’s autumn trophy hunts have taken place. It has enraged ecology groups which say that a dearth of salmon stocks may be responsible for many bears starving in their dens during hibernation. The female grizzlies have their cubs during winter after gorging themselves in September on the fish fats that sustain them through the following months.
“I’ve never seen bears hungry in the fall before, but last year they were starving,” British Columbian wildlife guide and photographer Doug Neasloss said. “I noticed in the spring there weren’t as many bears coming out, but I felt it was premature to jump to conclusions.”
But now, he said, “there just aren’t any bears. It’s scary.”
It was the same story, he said, from other guides over 16 rivers where once they would have been encountering dozens of grizzly bears.
“There has been a huge drop in numbers. I’ve never experienced anything this bad,” he said.
Reports from stream walkers, who monitor salmon streams across the vast territories, have been consistent, according to the conservation group Pacific Wild — no bears and, more worryingly, no bear cubs.
“There are just no bears out there, I’m hearing that from every side now,” said Ian McAllister from Pacific Wild.
He said that because a few grizzlies have been wandering close to centers of human habitation people thought there were plenty of bears around.
“In fact it’s the shortage of food that’s driving them into town. They’re starving,” he said.
In one river alone, the Fraser on Canada’s west coast, 10 million sockeye salmon were expected back to spawn there this summer. Only 1 million turned up. Canada’s Ministry of Environment announced in July that it would ban hunting of grizzly bears on an additional 470,000 hectares, bringing the total protected area for grizzlies and black bears to 1.9 million hectares.
The news came after Jane Goodall, the renowned wildlife campaigner, added her voice to the campaign against the hunts, which are for trophies, not meat.
“I’m very distressed and shocked that the bear hunt — grizzly bear and black bear — is continuing in a country like Canada,” she said. “These bears are such amazing, magnificent creatures and there are so many secrets still to discover about their lives.”
Grizzlies once roamed across most of North America and the Great Plains until European settlers gradually pushed them back. Only 1,000 remain in the contiguous US, where they are protected, but the number is less clear in the vast wilds of Canada and Alaska, where they are prized by hunters who shoot hundreds of the 350kg giants every year, providing a lucrative income for provincial governments that license the hunts.
“It’s appalling wildlife management, considering the widespread concern for coastal bears at the moment,” McAllister said.
Indigenous groups have added their voice to the call to save the bears, pointing out that trophy hunting is against their traditions and threatens tourism, which is a vital source of income for the remote areas of Canada.
But a senior biologist with the US National Wildlife Federation said the evidence remained anecdotal and called the reports “alarmist.”
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS