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All Politics Articles
Spring is in the air. Flowers are blossoming and the chirping of birds is everywhere.
Now let’s kill some bears.
Well at least that’s what the B.C. Government thinks spring is all about.
There will be no grizzly bear hunt in Alberta this year.
The Province has extended its three-year moratorium on grizzly bear hunting for 2010.
"It's impractical to try and establish all the different guidelines in the recovery plan to consider a hunt for this year," said Alberta Sustainable Resource Development spokesperson Dave Ealey.The Province released its new status report on grizzly bears in Alberta last week. It says there are 691 grizzly bears in Alberta up from an estimated 350 bears prior to the report. DNA samples revealed grizzly bears range in density from five to 18 bears per 1,000 square km.
The province's recently released grizzly bear numbers don't tell the full story of what's needed to help Alberta's grizzly populations, Alberta conservationists say.
Jim Pissot, the executive director of Wild Canada Conservation Alliance, and Nigel Douglas, Alberta Wilderness Association conservation specialist, both see the report as a call to the government to limit motorized access to grizzly habitat.
New Jersey’s black bear population has soared to nearly 3,500, a level that can no longer be controlled solely by non-lethal methods, a wildlife biologist said today as the state Fish and Game Council adopted a management policy recommending a six-day hunt in December.
The biologist, Patrick Carr, said the main reason for the growing population is the abundance of food state residents willingly and unwillingly provide. The result, he said, is that the bruins are living longer and giving birth to more cubs than bears in other parts of the country.
An updated grizzly bear status report released today by the Alberta government confirms shockingly low numbers of mature breeding grizzly bears in Alberta and highlights the urgency of reducing the number of grizzly deaths in the province. Conservationists now assert that there is no longer any reason to delay necessary recovery actions, including listing the grizzly as Threatened under the Alberta Wildlife Act, limiting the densities of roads and reducing the amount of motorized access in prime grizzly habitat, and implementing effective public education and conflict prevention programs.
A status report on Alberta’s grizzly bear population and habitat, prepared by an independent scientist, is now available online.
The status report establishes a new baseline of information using the advanced technique of DNA surveys and other data.
The report estimates 691 grizzly bears ranging in density from five to 18 bears per 1000 square kilometres. Some local populations with significant habitat alteration may be declining, other populations appear stable
Approximately 2,000 black bears are killed every year in California where it remains legal to hunt bears who weigh over 50 pounds (including cubs) with packs of dogs. The California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) has now proposed radical changes to bear hunting regulations that would allow even more bear killing. California residents: we need your help to stop this proposal.
INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev.-A bear advocacy group is criticizing the fatal shooting of a black bear at Lake Tahoe by a sheriff's deputy.
The Washoe County deputy shot and killed the 600-pound bear that rushed him Tuesday after wildlife officials tried to flush the hibernating animal out from under a home in Incline Village. Ann Bryant of the Tahoe-based BEAR League says her group has freed numerous bears from enclosed spaces and never needed to harm one. She says the bear's killing was unnecessary and unethical. Wildlife officials say the 10-year-old male bear was a nuisance animal that would have been euthanized anyway. They say the bear was accustomed to eating out of trash cans, and that's why bear-proof trash containers are important in bear country.
A bill now before the Legislature would restore the decades-old policies regulating guns in Acadia National Park, the St. Croix International Historic Site and the state's portion of the Appalachian Trail. Specifically, it would require gun owners to keep their weapons unloaded, broken down and stowed away in vehicle trunks, glove boxes or other such compartments. LD 1737 should be passed, and legislators should not allow it to turn into a Second Amendment showdown. The bill would restore the gun policy in place since the Reagan administration; last year, Congress and President Barack Obama enacted a credit card reform bill that included an amendment repealing the old law that prohibited people from carrying loaded guns in national parks.
New governor, same old question: What to do about New Jersey's black bears? The number of bear complaints, sightings and incidents rose for a third consecutive year in 2009, reviving the debate over whether the state has too many bears or too few residents willing to modify their lifestyles so bears won't want to come by. Unlike his predecessor, Jon Corzine, who favored non-lethal bear management, Governor Christie has said he favors a hunt - provided there is enough fresh and reliable scientific data to justify reducing the bear population.
Watch out, Smokey. Keep your head down, Yogi.
Saying that California's black bear population has quadrupled in the past 25 years, state Fish and Game Department officials are drafting new rules that could increase the number of black bears killed by hunters each year in the state by 50 percent or more.
The proposal also would allow hunters for the first time to use global positioning system devices on the collars of hounds that they use to track bears, along with automatic triggers that alert hunters when their dogs have treed a bear.
SAN LUIS OBISPO — State wildlife officials have renewed a proposal to open San Luis Obispo County to trophy hunting of black bears.
A large swath of the center of the county would be opened to bear hunting for the first time, according to an environmental report released last week. State biologists estimate that 1,067 bears live in the county and as many as 50 of them a year could be taken, if the hunt is authorized.
I can no longer contain myself. With the latest notice from the Muni in last week's paper (Greetings Olympic Guests) I wonder if we will ever get a handle on the disconnect between disposing of our garbage and our desire to get everyone using public transit? The notice from the Muni lets visitors know that all household garbage must be disposed of at the Nesters site. But how do you get it there? It is not permitted on WAVE transit and most of these visitors have no vehicles.
When one of my sons asked a member of our current council how he could get rid of his garbage without having transport he was advised to hide it in a knapsack and take it on board the bus.
As with most small mountain towns in BC, Rossland sits squarely in and is surrounded by prime real estate when it comes to our big black friends in the forest. While certainly not desired, it’s not entirely uncommon to see the occasional black bear strolling through town. Rossland has been perhaps lucky over the past number of years to have not had any major bear/human interactions to have resulted in injuries. One probable cause contributing to that and to reducing bear/human interactions in general has been the hard work of the Bear Aware society. Facing an annual funding crunch and fighting for their society’s survival has worn down the folks involved, and the program is in real danger of disappearing from our area.
Nunavut's environment minister has rejected a wildlife regulator's recommendation for how many polar bears should be hunted in the Baffin Bay region.
The current quota allows the killing of 105 bears a year in the region, which stretches from Baffin Island in Nunavut to northern Greenland.
The territorial government asked the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board in 2008 to consider a smaller bear harvest or a hunting moratorium in the region.
Jan 27, 2010 — Web Page: Take Action
Things you can do to help support advocacy work to protect bears and their environment.
A confrontation with a bear in Allegany County is going to cost a Niagara Falls reservist a week’s salary but he hopes, at least, the incident may serve as a cautionary tale to anyone confronting a wild beast in the woods.
Michael Moore, who has done two stints in Iraq with the Army and is now an Air Force reservist, said he could have been fined up to $2,000 and spent time in jail for killing a bear while hunting this past November in Allegany county.
The bear came up upon Moore in the woods in Birdsall on opening day of deer hunting season November 21.
“I sat there for a good thirty seconds, to see if he would go away,” Moore said as he recalled the incident from his Niagara Falls home in Cayuga Village. “I turned to my right and fired a warning shot.”
B.C.'s policy frameworks fail to take ethical issues into consideration
A new decade has dawned and in a few months yet another year of grizzly bear hunting will commence in British Columbia.
The B.C. grizzly bear hunt has been a source of unrelenting controversy. Both sides are stuck in a continual expert-driven argument in which both camps claim science supports their positions.
4,437 students and teachers in the corridor received a free pin this week.
Tom Thomson's idea to develop commemorative Whistler pins for the Olympics came to fruition Thursday as thousands of pins were distributed to students and teachers throughout the Sea to Sky corridor.
On Jan. 21 every child in the school district between D'arcy and Squamish received a free nickel-sized silver pin featuring a black bear, a red maple leaf and the word "Whistler" in blue capital letters.
Thomson called the pins the "Cubby," in honour of the Loonie and the Toonie coins. And he hopes during the Olympics the pins will become their own kind of currency as collectors from around the world vie for them.
In spring of 2006, a female grizzly began regularly herding her three cubs onto the roadside near Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park.
While the park had seen grizzlies before, bear 399 marked the first time a grizzly became such a prominent roadside fixture for park visitors. Bear jams formed when the family appeared, and park rangers conducted crowd control to make sure the masses kept a respectful distance as the sow and her cubs foraged for plants along the roadside or broke through the ice on Oxbow Bend to harvest stranded fish.
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