Screen captures from a game at nomoregrizzlies.com that allows a "hunter" to hunt the bears using cement bags, chainsaws, oil barrels and other weapons. The game makes a statement about the threats to grizzly bears in Alberta.

It proclaims Alberta's Sustainable Resource Development Minister Mel Knight "Alberta's new hero" for contemplating the resumption of the annual spring hunt in Alberta — despite a new report that suggests there are fewer than 700 grizzlies in the province.

The group complains that Knight's predecessor "was soft on grizzlies," and the group has even created a video game that rewards players for killing bears by lobbing barrels of oil, ATVs, dump trucks and other bizarre articles at them.

If it sounds outrageous, it is.

It's satire.

Alberta Wilderness Association conservation specialist Nigel Douglas says the environmental group resorted to fiction because its campaign using facts wasn't working.

 "It's pretty obvious grizzlies are in trouble," he said Thursday. "We have to try new approaches because we've been talking sense and science around grizzly bears for a long time and the government hasn't been listening to that."

Douglas said biologists have clearly spelled out the problems facing grizzlies and what needs to be done, but the government hasn't followed their recommendations to protect core habitat areas. Critics complain the only concrete action the government has taken has been to suspend the annual hunt in 2006, and now even that suspension could be lifted.

The province's Endangered Species Conservation committee recommended in 2002 that grizzlies should be listed as a threatened species, but the recommendation was ignored by the government. The committee is meeting Friday to re-examine the situation in light of the latest report.

The minister told the Edmonton Journal last week there won't be a spring grizzly hunt this year, but he hopes to make a decision on whether to resume the hunt before the next potential hunting season in spring 2011.

Bear advocate Jim Pissot applauded the No More Grizzlies campaign, saying its assertions were no more ridiculous than the government's "obscene delay" in taking action to protect grizzlies, or claims by hunters that a hunt would help the province better manage grizzlies.

"Those claims are more laughable that the satire in the two videos and the video game," he said. "I certainly think what the Alberta Wilderness Association has done is very innovative. They're fighting fire with fire."

But Pissot said some Albertans have at first glance misinterpreted the campaign's message.

"I have had three people call me already to say, 'This is horrible.' But I think most people will get it."