A giant teddy bear faced the hang-man's noose in a downtown Edmonton park Saturday, surrounded by a frenzied mob yelling for blood.

"Kill the grizzly! Kill the grizzly," chanted the crowd, cheering wildly as the chair was kicked out from under its weight, leaving it to swing slowly from a tree limb.

Another "grizzly" -- a bear-suited human -- was placed in a medieval stockade as the same crowd, waving placards with "More Roads, Less Grizzlies" and "Stop the EmBEARassment," pelted it with a barrage of projectiles that drenched its fur and left it covered in bits of red plastic, remnants of the water-filled "tomatoes."

Saturday's rally by the Edmonton chapter of No More Grizzlies got the attention of passersby such as James Nelson, who said he literally paused mid-step when he heard grizzly bears referred to as "godless killing machines."

"I thought they were serious," he said. "It kind of stopped me in my tracks.

"I was pretty relieved when I realized they didn't mean it, and that they're actually hoping to save the grizzlies. Pretty clever, really."

Nelson's words would be music to Nigel Douglas's ears.

A conservation specialist with the Alberta Wilderness Association, Douglas was at the event, but stood outside the perimeter, pacing the sidewalk as the assembled crowd called for the obliteration of the grizzly bear population in Alberta.

"This (campaign) has obviously taken us outside of our comfort zone," said Douglas, laughing nervously.

"We decided in the end that we've been telling the grizzlies' story for a lot of years and the government isn't listening, so we needed to look at new approaches to get the message across."

The No More Grizzlies campaign has spawned a website -- www.nomoregrizzlies.com-- that includes a video game allowing players to "kill" growling grizzlies with an array of weapons, including ATVs, oil barrels and dump trucks.

There are also two "public service announcements" on YouTube where grizzlies are shown destroying cities.

The new approach, moving from science to satire, was launched recently and has essentially turned the message on its ear, calling for the elimination of a species the AWA is dedicated to saving.

Ultimately, says Douglas, the AWA wants to recover the grizzly bear population and protect its habitat, but first wants the provincial government to have it declared an endangered species.

In 2002, the Alberta Endangered Species Conservation Committee made such a recommendation -- based on statistics that showed the population below 1,000 -- which the government ignored.

The committee is poised to release its latest report, which is again rumoured to include threatened status for the animal.

Earlier this week, Sustainable Resource Development Minister Mel Knight said he hadn't seen the report, but said he plans to take it through government channels when it does arrive.

The province suspended the annual spring grizzly hunt and appointed a recovery team to map out a blueprint for bolstering grizzly populations while launching a program of DNA-based research to count the animals.

Knight says that was the right approach to take.

"The numbers are not that much different than the numbers we had in 2002 when that decision was made," he said.

The Alberta government now estimates there are fewer than 700 grizzlies in the province.

Although Knight has the authority to make the decision on the fate of the grizzlies, he says he wants to run it past his cabinet colleagues.

"The decision can be done at the ministerial level, but I think this is an extremely important thing for Albertans," he said. "I think it is a serious issue and we'll take it seriously and deal with it through the system."

Knight conceded that there are vocal forces on both sides of the debate -- a lobby to list the bear as threatened and another lobby that is pressing for the resumption of the annual hunt. He has said he plans to make a decision on the fate of the grizzly before next spring.

In the meantime, No More Grizzlies is determined to take its message to the masses, across Alberta and beyond.

A life-size, cardboard cut-out of U.S. satirist and comedian Stephen Colbert played a prominent role at Saturday's event.

Rally organizers heckled Colbert for "being soft on bears."

Their mock attack was videotaped, the plan to send the footage to Colbert in the hopes of getting some airtime on his television show, The Colbert Report.

For further reading on this topic:

When science isn't enough, on to sarcasm? , Edmonton Journal, March 31st, 2010