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All Conservation Articles
A surge of problem bears on the North Shore is causing headaches for conservation officers, as a poor berry crop has driven the animals into populated areas.
So far, eight bears have been killed on the North Shore, compared to 10 last year and one the year before.
Conservation officers and RCMP have been called to three instances where bears have entered people's houses, including one on Tuesday on Brockton Crescent in North Vancouver where a woman was trapped inside the home as the bear rummaged through the kitchen.
WINNIPEG - A wildlife biologist from Minnesota says black bear problems this summer can be solved without killing any more bears.
Lynn Rogers, director of the Wildlife Research Institute and the North American Bear Centre in Ely, Minnesota, said studies show that putting food out for bears at a designated site - a practice known as diversionary feeding - can keep black bears away from populated areas but doesn't condition the bears to human food.
BANFF, Alta. - It's been a deadly year so far, for wildlife in the national and provincial parks of the Rocky Mountains.
In all, 10 bears have been killed by humans in Banff, Kootenay and Yoho national parks, and three of those were grizzly bears hit by cars or trains.
And while not dead, another grizzly is lost from the local population after it was relocated to a more remote region of Alberta for killing a sheep dangerously close to where children were sleeping at Camp Chief Hector in Bow Valley Provincial Park.
Animal care workers are optimistic that three young black bear cubs whose mother was killed by conservation officers this week could lose their taste for garbage and eventually be released back into the wild.
The young cubs were taken in by Langley's Critter Care Wildlife Society after their mother was shot for charging an Anmore man on Monday.
After just two days with the seven-month-old cubs, animal care specialist Angela Fontana says she thinks they have a good shot at rehabilitation.
You may have read about the Spirit Bears of the Great Bear Rainforest in Kermode Bears or in Pipeline Through Paradise both featured in the August 2011 National Geographic Magazine. These articles feature images by Paul Nicklen and were supported by imagery from an expedition to the Great Bear Rainforest September 2010 with the International League of Conservation Photographers. See what it takes to capture stunning imagery in this wild landscape with a behind the scenes footage and interview with Paul Nicklen here and an eyewitness account of this amazing ecosystem and the people and wildlife that call if home with photographer and conservationist Ian Mc
WHITEFISH - A Missoula-based nonprofit organization this week adopted a 71-acre tract of wildlife habitat in the Yaak Mountains near Troy that it hopes will improve grizzly bear migration corridors.
The property was purchased by the Vital Ground Foundation from a private landowner and lies within the Cabinet-Yaak Grizzly Bear Recovery Zone. The acquisition helps expand grizzly bear "linkage zones," or corridors that provide safe travel for bears and other wildlife that rove between seasonal habitats.
Some of the world's foremost bear experts are to gather in Banff next month to find new ways to prevent grizzlies from getting killed along railway tracks inside the national park.
A dozen of the bears have been killed and a half dozen cubs orphaned in the last decade and experts estimate there are now only between 45 and 60 grizzlies left in the park. Last year, Alberta reclassified the species as threatened because of rapidly dwindling numbers.
Three of the mighty bruins have died this year. Two were killed on the Trans-Canada Highway. A third was hit by a train on the CP Rail line and left behind two orphan cubs.
KALISPELL (AP) - State wildlife officials have captured a female grizzly bear south of Marias Pass and relocated the animal to the Cabinet Mountains as part of an effort to boost the grizzly population in northwestern Montana.
The Daily Inter Lake reports the 2- to 3-year-old bear was trapped by state Fish, Wildlife and Parks personnel in the Puzzle Creek drainage and released near Spar Lake south of Troy on July 27.
With grizzly bears and people coming closer and closer to one another in the front country of Grand Teton National Park, officials have refined their guidelines as to how close people can be to wildlife.
The need for the revisions arose as more and more visitors took to the roofs of their vehicles to photograph bears and, in at least two instances, the bears took exception and charged the vehicles, according to park officials.
It was seen as one of the most distressing effects of climate change ever recorded: polar bears dying of exhaustion after being stranded between melting patches of Arctic sea ice.
But now the government scientist who first warned of the threat to polar bears in a warming Arctic has been suspended and his work put under official investigation for possible scientific misconduct.
Charles Monnett, a wildlife biologist, oversaw much of the scientific work for the government agency that has been examining drilling in the Arctic. He managed about $50m (£30.5m) in research projects.
Arctic sea ice is at a record low this month, according to the University of Washington Polar Science Center. Sea ice volume is 47 per cent lower than it was in 1979, when researchers started collecting satellite records.
Because their ice habitat is shrinking away from land, polar bears have been forced to find food by either staying on shore or swimming vast distances to find sea ice.
BOZEMAN, Mont. - An adult female grizzly bear in the West Yellowstone, Mont., area had to be killed this week due to concerns for human safety.
According to bear managers, the grizzly's habituation towards people, human food rewards and the lack of remote relocation sites led to an inter-agency decision to remove the bear.
Steve Gehman's first job as a wildlife biologist landed him in the middle of some of the richest grizzly bear habitat in North America. Fresh out of graduate school at Oregon State University, Gehman took a job documenting wildlife activity near Gardiner on the northern edge of Yellowstone National Park.
It was on those rugged slopes that Gehman first documented wild grizzly bears. It was an experience that developed into an occupation and later a passion. His career would lead him north to Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Kodiak Island, to Montana's Swan Range and the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness.
CTV Ottawa News' Leanne interviews, Martyn Obbart, Steve Herrero and Steven Amstrup at the International Bear Association Conference. Watch three segments here.
PORT HARDY — A pair of young black bear cubs orphaned when their mother was struck and killed by a car Friday near Port Hardy are being cared for at the North Island Wildlife Recovery Centre after leading Conservation Officers on a merry chase for more than eight hours.
The sow was struck and killed on Highway 19 about 15 kilometres south of Port Hardy in the early morning hours July 15.
Dave Janke of Port Hardy, en route to work in Port Alice, came upon the sow at 6 a.m. Spotting one or more bear cubs moving on her body, he called Port Hardy RCMP, who in turn notified Port McNeill-based Conservation Officer Tim Schumacher.
A female grizzly bear was struck and killed on the Trans Canada Highway in Banff National Park on July 13, the third such death this year.
The bear was struck near the Castle Junction after the bear found a way to slip underneath a protective fence that is meant to prevent wildlife-vehicle conditions on the route.
YAKIMA, Wash. -- Joe Sebille was hiking alone in the North Cascades one afternoon last October when he rounded a bend and came face-to-face with a little piece of history: the first grizzly bear verified in the Cascades since 1996.
He thought it was something else.
"I'd been up there three days before and there had been three black bears, almost at that exact spot," said Sebille, a 26-year-old small-equipment mechanic from Mount Vernon. "There'd been all these people around that time, maybe 50 other people, so I felt really safe.
The independent assessment, written by WCS Senior Conservation Scientist Dr. John Weaver, is a compilation and synthesis of the latest information on these species - and how climate change may affect them - from 30 biologists in the region and from nearly 300 scientific papers. In addition, Weaver spent four months hiking and riding horseback through these remote roadless areas to evaluate their importance for conservation.
The Crown of the Continent is a trans-border ecosystem of dramatic landscapes, pristine water sources, and diverse wildlife that stretches more than 250 miles along the Rocky Mountains from Glacier National Park-Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana north to the Canadian Rockies. Weaver focused his assessment on public lands in the Montana portion -one of the most spectacular and intact ecosystems remaining in the lower 48 states. Since 1910 when Glacier National Park was established, citizens and government representatives have worked hard to protect the core wildlands and wildlife in this region.
ORLANDO, Fla. -- Florida's black bears have made a dramatic comeback and Florida wildlife officials said they just took the bear off the threatened species list.
There are now an estimated 3,000 black bears across the state and officials said that could open the door for a bear hunting season in Florida.
HELENA - Yellowstone National Parkofficials say a grizzly bear has been killed after a car struck it on the Grand Loop Road.
Park officials said in a statement Tuesday the driver hit the 417-pound adult male at 2 a.m. Thursday.
The bear limped off the road and the driver did not get out of the vehicle to investigate.
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