By Ethan Baron, Vancouver ProvinceSeptember 27, 2009 10:02 AM
Bear-viewing guide Julius Strauss with a replica grizzly skull.
Photograph by: Jakobdulisse.com, For The Province
NELSON, B.C. -- Julius Strauss thought he'd gotten away from men with guns. Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Bosnia - the highly regarded war correspondent says he'd seen far too much killing.
After 15 years of reporting on the world's conflicts, the British-born Strauss moved to Canada.
In a lushly forested valley two hours drive northeast of Nelson, in eastern British Columbia, he and his wife, Kristin, have established a thriving ecotourism business.
For four years, they've been bringing visitors from around the world to see B.C.'s bears, adding what Strauss estimates to be $500,000 a year to the province's economy.
Now the former journalist says he finds himself in a different sort of conflict, one that threatens not only the peaceful life he and his wife have carved out for themselves, but their livelihood as well.
On Friday, B.C. Ministry of Environment officials backed away from a plan to extend the length of the grizzly hunt in the province's Kootenays region by at least 10 days.
But the legal trophy hunt for grizzlies may still destroy the business the Strausses have created at Grizzly Bear Ranch, Strauss says.
"In any given year, that spring hunt could take out three or four of the six bears we see on a regular basis," says the 41-year-old. "People book eight months to two years ahead. We don't know if we're going to have any bears next year."
Strauss suffered serious post-traumatic stress disorder from war trauma while working as a journalist.
Now, he says, he's engaged in a battle he never wished for.
"I wanted to come and live in the wilderness," Strauss says. "I've been to a lot of countries in the world, and this is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. I didn't come here to fight the hunters."
Environment Ministry spokesman Suntanu Dalal admits that an extension of the grizzly hunt in the Kootenay region could be proposed again in future.
"The regional manager wants to explore with his biologists and with stakeholders whether there are alternate ways of reaching the same biological objective of reducing the harvest of bears in concentrated areas that extending the season was proposed to do," Dalal says.
Dalal provided a statement saying "the grizzly bear is not a species-at-risk in British Columbia."
The statement contradicts the ministry's own "blue list" of B.C.'s at-risk species, which, according to its website, includes grizzlies.
Grizzlies are considered inedible by the ministry, and hunters who shoot the approximately 300 bears documented as killed each year in B.C. are not required to remove meat from the carcasses as they must with other game animals.
At Grizzly Bear Ranch, eight guests at a time stay in four riverside cabins, paying $1,500 to $2,000 for a four-night grizzly-viewing package.
"England doesn't have the variety of flora and fauna that countries like Canada have," says Richard Kent, 46, an information-technology director from Britain staying at the ranch with his wife.
By allowing the hunt, British Columbia is reneging on its responsibility as a custodian of one of the world's natural wonders, Kent says.
Australian visitor Kaylene Navonu sees killing a grizzly for sport as a selfish act that should not be legally sanctioned, particularly in light of the animal's ecotourism value.
"If you've shot it, taken it away, it's not there for the next person to enjoy," says Navonu, a finance manager for a pharmacy group.
Former guest Jon Reynolds of England has collected 15,000 signatures from around the world, including 400 from China and 500 from France, on a petition against the grizzly hunt.
Reynolds plans to collect more signatures next year while travelling in B.C., where 79 per cent of residents oppose the grizzly hunt, according to a 2008 poll by McAllister Research. He said he intends to deliver the document to Premier Gordon Campbell's office.
Reynolds came to the ranch last year with his wife, and had what he describes as one of the best holidays of his life - until he learned that the bears they were watching could be legally hunted.
"The first thing that I felt was anger, and then after that it was just a case of disgust," Reynolds says by phone from Britain. "You expect these sorts of things from a Third World country. Canada has such green credentials."
Hunters don't see the hunt as a threat to the grizzly population.
"This area has lots of bears," says Nathan Adrian, a local millworker who has hunted grizzlies in the past. "We end up with the bears in our backyards. When there's hunting pressure, they seem to stay away a little more."
The B.C. government pegs the province's grizzly population at 16,000. Hunt critics reject this figure because it's based on extrapolation from grizzly-rich areas.
The ministry currently estimates the grizzly-bear population of the Kootenays at 2,348 bears, a number that's also disputed.
Hunting brings $350 million a year into B.C., according to The Guide Outfitters Association of B.C.
The association of B.C. supports a hunt extension across the province, says general manager Scott Ellis.
Hunters out for deer, elk and moose in B.C.'s Interior this year are reporting higher-than-usual numbers of grizzlies, and females with two to four cubs, he says.
"The grizzly-bear populations are healthy and growing significantly," Ellis says.
In June 2003, the Centre for Integral Economics reported that B.C. grizzly hunting brought in $3 million a year, and tourism related to grizzly-viewing netted $6 million.
Hunters legally kill an average of 55 grizzlies a year in the Kootenays, about a third of them female, with another dozen documented kills by conservation officers or citizens believing bears to be a threat to people or property, according to a 2007 report by Environment Ministry biologist Garth Mowat.
Female grizzlies can be hunted legally if they're not accompanied by cubs. "Hunters are requested to shoot male bears, although gender can be difficult to ascertain in the field," Mowat writes in the report.
Strauss's efforts to persuade ministry biologists and bureaucrats to close the hunt in his area have netted little but animosity, he says.
"What could kill us is the fact that these government officials are totally unaccountable to anybody but the hunters," Strauss says.
ebaron@theprovince.com
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