With Alberta, Canada's Grizzly population having shrunk to 700 and pushed to it's northern less populated region, this spring has been a sight to behold with bears back in the southern prairie regions .........With a slow green-up due to a late winter cooldown, Grizzlies from Montana are actually moving north in search of food........ Grizzlies were extirpated about 70 years ago in southern Alberta as ranchers went to war to rid their grasslands of these "cow competitors"......................As in the USA, Griz historically roamed prairie as well as mountainous habitat prior to humans overruning the terrain with cattle ranches..........Ranchers want to institute a hunt of the bears but as Canadian biologist Brian Horejsi sees it----"People who are in favour of hunting the bears, including ranchers, need to accept that grizzly bears belong here in Alberta"......... “If we have people who can't live with that, then what we have to do is take a contemporary and progressive approach to it and buy these people out and take that land-base and convert it to public land,"

Ranchers spotting grizzlies in southern Alberta

 

Sightings mark a return to the bear's natural habitat

 

cbc.ca

 

A southern Alberta wildlife officer says more grizzly bears have been spotted on the prairies, like these bears in Cardston. (Larry Lowry)

 

 Grizzly bears are returning to the southwestern Alberta prairies, according to a wildlife officer.Residents of Cardston and Pincher Creek are reporting grizzly sightings at least three times a week, said Lyle Lester, a provincial fish and wildlife officer.

 

"It seems like we've had a spring that has been slow in coming and this means bears are hungry," he said. "They tend to go places where they can find something to eat. We're finding they are moving further and further east."

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Lester said when he transferred to the area 15 years ago, seeing a grizzly was rare. The sightings mark a return to the original range of the grizzly, which was pushed into the mountain region as human settlement grew, he added.

 

"Grizzlies disappeared…in many of these areas probably close to 70 years ago. And it's kind of a different critter when you see a big old bear lumbering across a prairie landscape, and wandering through your cattle area, your ranchland. It kind of makes your eyes go a little big."

 

The grizzlies in the area are mostly coming north from Montana, where the regional bear population is as large as the entire population in Alberta, Lester said.

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Make grizzly bear hunt ban permanent, expert says

Policy against hunting the threatened bears is now reviewed annually

cbc.ca

   

An Alberta wildlife biologist says the province must formalize into legislation the ban on grizzly bear hunting. (Steve Michel/Parks Canada/Canadian Press)

A wildlife biologist says it's time the Alberta government made a final decision about grizzly bear hunting in the province.

Alberta currently prohibits grizzly hunting, but the policy is reviewed annually.
Brian Horejsi, who wrote the last major report on Alberta grizzlies in 2004, said the province needs to get rid of a policy that is reviewed periodically, and pass a law instead.

“Not policy. Not a plan. We need some legislation and some regulatory action. Then we'll start to recover this grizzly bear habitat, eliminate the mortality and dismiss for once and for all time — hunting,” he said.

Alberta has a smaller grizzly population than Montana and B.C., but a higher mortality rate, Horejsi said.“They are dying in Alberta at a disproportionate rate,” he said.
There are estimated to be fewer than 700 grizzlies in Alberta. They have been declared threatened under Alberta's Wildlife Act in 2010.

Ryan McClelland, who ranches about 100 kilometres west of Lethbridge, said grizzlies are on his property at least once a week, breaking into his grain bins and making him fear for his family’s safety."There was a couple times I took the kids to the bus with a rifle,” he said.
McClelland said he’d like to see the province permit a controlled hunt in problem areas such as his.

Nathan Webb, a carnivore specialist with Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development, said significant conditions would have to be met before officials ever considered opening a grizzly bear hunt.

That would include a comprehensive bear-human conflict avoidance strategy and a science-based population estimate of the bears, he said.

But Horejsi said such statements from provincial officials do nothing to ease his concerns.
“We don’t need to study this bear population any more. We know that it is endangered, we know its habitat is fragmented,” he said.

People who are in favour of hunting the bears, including ranchers, need to accept that grizzly bears belong here in Alberta, Horejsi said. “If we have people who can't live with that, then what we have to do is take a contemporary and progressive approach to it and buy these people out and take that land-base and convert it to public land,” he said.