Alberta, Canada's Grizzly population is sinking quickly...............The 4+% annual mortality rate that has been occurring for the past 3 years is nearly twice what scientists feel is a sustainable death rate......Restrictions on motorized access to the bears habitat is essential if the death spiral is to be reversed for our Northern Griz population................The Alberta Government needs to take a lesson out of the Yellowstone playbook where Managers have strategically winnowed down the road density to a point where the Griz population is stable and growing........

No improvement in grizzly bear mortality in Alberta: report

By Eva Ferguson 

 

With mortality rates for grizzlies unchanged and unsustainable for the third year in a row, environmentalists are demanding the Alberta government toughen up a bear management strategy they say isn't working.

CALGARY — With mortality rates for grizzlies unchanged and unsustainable for the third year in a row, environmentalists are demanding the Alberta government toughen up a bear management strategy they say isn't working.
Alberta Sustainable Resources and Development has released grizzly bear mortality rates for 2010, with recorded totals still at 21, the same as the year previous, and one more than 2008's total of 20.
But the province estimates up to 40 per cent of grizzly deaths go unreported every year, according to the 2010 Status of the Alberta Grizzly Bear in Alberta report.
That would bring total mortality estimates as high as 29 in Alberta in 2010, or 4.2 per cent of the grizzly population — significantly higher than the 2.8 per cent mortality rate suggested as sustainable in the same status report.
"We've known for a long time that grizzlies are in trouble — and it's a clear sign that something is going wrong with the way we're managing the landscape," said Nigel Douglas, spokesman for the Alberta Wilderness Association, adding that grizzlies were listed as threatened last June.
"The threatened listing is meaningless if serious measures are not introduced to reduce grizzly bear mortality."We need to draw a line in the sand, and we need a commitment to do it, not just manage."
Environmental groups argue the single best measure to protect the bears would be a restriction on motorized access to grizzly bear habitat."Now it is time to start addressing the problem that will actually result in recovery for grizzly bears on the ground: too much human access in grizzly bear habitat," said Sarah Elmeligi, senior conservation planner for the Southern Alberta Chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.
"Reducing road densities and managing motorized access in Alberta's foothills must be the focus of government action, and the continuing high levels of grizzly deaths make it more urgent than ever," added Wendy Francis, program director of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative.Douglas said the 2008 provincial grizzly recovery plan clearly links grizzly bears' mortality to their proximity to human access routes.That report said that within the Alberta central Rockies ecosystem, 89 per cent of human-caused grizzly deaths happened within 500 metres of a road. In the national parks, 100 per cent of human-caused mortalities were within 200 metres of a road.
Douglas suggests one way to reduce motorized access is to put gates on industrial roads, most leading to new gas wells or forestry cutblocks."Too often, what should be private roads just immediately become public," said Douglas. "The more we put people into contact with bears, the more the chances are that the bears will get killed."Alberta Sustainable Resource and Development Minister Mel Knight said he too is concerned that mortality rates have remained unchanged for three years.But he adds that control efforts dealing with millions of hectares of habitat are a huge undertaking, and will take some time."We're talking about 3.7 million hectares of habitat management. Controlling access into a region that size is serious business."
Knight said he is also working with industrial operators to gate access roads, but the existing Public Lands Act doesn't force them to restrict access."It's difficult when that legislation was originally written to provide access to public lands, when we wanted people to be able to get out and explore."Knight said the province is looking to put more teeth into the act so that industrial operators will have to put up gates.The newly launched BearSmart program is working to educate the public in methods to reduce conflicts with grizzlies, Knight added. And the province is also working with Canadian Pacific Railway to reduce grain spillage on train tracks.