"Opinionatedly Yours"
#18: March 29, 1999
More Than I Can Bear (Parts One and Two)
By Barry Kent MacKay

Wow.

As reported in the last installment of this column, in January 1999, we animal protectionists experienced one of relatively very few significant "victories" ever achieved in the province of Ontario, Canada, with the provincial government's announcement of January 15 (followed by a public comment period) to end the spring bear hunt. As I began to write this column we were deeply into a public comment period, mandated by the provincial Environmental Assessment Act, that ended February 20, 1999. We "won" the ban, although there was a subsequent increase in the number of bears that could be hunted in the fall. The government worked out a compensation plan that gives $250 Canadian to each outfitter in business as of this year for every hunter that outfitter accommodated in the previous spring bear hunt season.

A Two-Parter

This article is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the issue and provides background information.

The second part deals with the controversy.

I suspect many readers might want to skip part one and go directly to the controversy for the following reason: it is presented as a means of helping animal protectionists to deal with the debates that almost invariably spring from even minor victories we achieve in establishing a level of protection for any kind of animal -- even baby bears.

Part One

In some respects it is not that big a thing, this ending of one component of an overall hunt, but it has led to an astounding outpouring of accusation and counter accusation, emotive if not necessarily accurate censure, threats and complaints, credit and blame and exceptional media coverage, all of it draped in profound ironies. To hear some arguments, it appears that the Canadian (and possibly American) way of life as we know it will come to an end.

When Spring Is in the Air

The issue is pretty straightforward. Unlike most U.S. states, for the last three decades Ontario has allowed a spring bear hunt using either bait or dogs. Ontario is the first province in Canada to ban the spring bear hunt. Nova Scotia has never had a spring bear hunt and tiny Prince Edward Island has no bears.

Most of the hunters taking advantage of this opportunity to kill bears each spring came from the United States, where there are a lot fewer American black bears than in Ontario, and where spring hunting is not allowed throughout most of the country. Hunters also came from Europe, where bears are generally endangered, thus protected from sport hunting. Other spring bear hunters were of local origin.

For outfitters in central and northern Ontario who catered to this clientele, the spring bear hunt meant outside revenue -- often major revenue -- at a time when other sources of income are extremely limited. There are probably 1,500 to 2,000 outfitters scattered through the north who provide services to spring bear hunters. Of course many other people in the north and central parts of the province benefit by servicing the industry.

There are two hunting methods used. One is to use dogs with radio collars that allow them to be tracked through the bush. The hounds sniff out and pursue bears emerging from hibernation. The hunters track the dogs, either by following the sound of their barking or by using radio telemetry, or both. Hunters usually prefer to follow the howling of the dogs and often claim that the high tech collars are used only to locate lost dogs.

Normally, when chased by hounds, a bear will go up a tree. The hunter would arrive on the scene and, at his or her leisure, shoot the bear.

Sometimes dogs and bear would come into contact with each other and battle would take place to the detriment of both, although that is also something some outfitters deny. Certainly not all bears invariably climb trees when chased by dogs; some "take a stand" at the base of the tree, and may hurt or kill attacking dogs as they enter a frenzied assault on the besieged bear until the hunter arrives.

The second method of spring bear hunting is baiting. In this method various things that are cheap or free and that bears like to eat are dumped in front of a blind where the hunter hides and waits. A good outfitter starts baiting well before the arrival of a client so that local bears, after emerging from winter sleep, become used to the site as a source of food. The "gut pile" that is used to attract the bears is often essentially that: a pile of offal from some slaughterhouse or other such source, sometimes augmented by stale donuts, table scraps or whatever else might attract a bear. Bears are particularly attracted to the sweet smell of fruits, and by the high fat content of nuts. Whatever is used, it may simply be put in a bucket or barrel. The bear, hungry after hibernation, has a keen sense of smell and comes to the bait. The hunter in the blind then shoots the bear.

There can be long waits in which the hunter must remain still. Often blinds are up in trees, and along with the hunter's high tech rifle there must be a low-tech pot to pee in, so lengthy can the wait for a bear become.

I remember about 25 years ago an outfitter, in the summer well after the spring hunt and months before the fall hunt, took me to see where he placed visiting American hunters in blinds, in front of bait piles. When we reached the site I pointed out that it was certainly convenient; we had traveled much less than a mile in from a lightly used rural road. He laughed and explained that we had taken the direct route. He liked his bear-bating setup to be close to the road, just far enough in that the sound of a car or truck on the road would be absorbed by intervening bush. That way he could easily service the site. The "client," however, was taken to the blind by a long, circuitous route through woods and forests, to give the impression of being deep in the wilderness.

Before any outfitter protests otherwise, I'm happy to concede that it was just my luck to encounter the one outfitter in all Ontario who practiced such deceptions.

Adult and Yearling Bears, Yes
Sows with Dependent Cubs, No

Some years ago the government agency administering the hunt, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) made the hunting of sows with cubs of the year illegal. The cubs, which are born during "hibernation" (which, in fact, is for bears a period of greatly reduced metabolism -- not hibernation with its accompanying drop in metabolism, but more a complex form of dormancy) are entirely dependent upon the sow for their survival. By the time the spring bear hunt opened on April 15, the cubs only weighed a few pounds and, while very curious and exploratory, were still developing motor coordination, still nursing and are still entirely dependent on their mothers. Litter size reflects food availability, with more cubs on average per littler in the warmer south than in the north. In Ontario there are typically two cubs, rarely three. The cubs are with their mothers when the fall hunt begins, and probably at least some of them are still dependent even then, although bigger.

Not only does the male bear not attend to family duties, he may very well attack the female. He may kill the cubs and may even eat them, even if they are his own mate or progeny, a point that the pro-spring bear hunt community harps upon endlessly (although the true level of "cannibalism" is unknown). The female is protective of her cubs and seeks to keep them out of harm's way.

In theory, both hunting methods were supposed to work to prevent sows with cubs from being accidentally shot. Whether the bear is up a tree, or is nosing at a gut pile in front of a blind, there was plenty of time for the patient hunter to examine the animal and determine whether there were cubs. Unless the bear was attended by cubs, killing her was, technically, legal.

The problem was that in practice those methods did not always work. The degree to which they failed to work is a matter of very heated debate.

While female bears are, on average, smaller than males, and one-year-old bears are smaller than older bears, there is much overlap of size. And at any rate, in the field the size of an animal can be difficult to judge. The genitalia of the male are usually hidden by long fur. Milk-swollen teats of the female are often obscured by long, coarse fur, or blocked from view by the bulk of the animal, or may, in fact, be recently depleted. Shooting a sow bear is not illegal, and as sows give birth every other year, there's something like a fifty/fifty chance that any given mature sow is not a mother.

However, sow bears who are attended by cubs may, before coming into view at a bait pile, send their cubs up a tree. Such a rich food source as the gut pile may well harbor lurking boar bears who would be a dangerous threat to the cubs. If a female bear can smell the bait, so can a male. Thus the absence of cubs when a hungry sow bear ambles into view does not, as so many bear hunters so want to think, indicate an adult male or a female without dependent young. To find the cubs after it's discovered that a lactating adult female has been shot is extremely difficult. They could be in any direction and are small, dark, and hard to discern even though the foliage has yet to develop. One bear researcher has determined that the female bear may wander as far as 3.2 kilometers from where her cubs are stashed. Cubs may remain at a "baby sitting tree," usually a rough-barked white pine, where they've been taught to climb and where they are relatively safe as the mother bear wanders in search of food. The bush can be dense to the point of being impenetrable to humans and it could easily take days of an intensive grid search to find orphaned cubs.

Another Isolated Incident

When the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) did a TV news story on this issue a couple of years ago, they sent a film team north to accompany a spring hunt with an outfitter guiding a hunter from Europe. The hunter waited until a bear came to the bait pile. I know that pro-spring bear hunters will choose not to believe me, but when I saw the video footage on my TV screen for the first time, I knew from the bear's anatomical proportions (relatively large head compared to body) and the playful way it toyed with a length of bone that it was a young bear. But the hunter, who had bragged previously in front of the camera that he only killed adult males, fired anyway, sending the scrawny bear cartwheeling to the accompaniment of highly pitched screams.

The bear died quickly and, upon investigation, turned out to be a female born the previous year and far from fully grown --- not an adult male. The hunter made all manner of embarrassed excuses, pleading with the CBC staff (on camera and, as I was told by one of them later, off camera as well) that the bear looked large, didn't it? But the fact was that while it was legal for him to kill the bear, he did not kill the big boar he had stated was his target.

An isolated incident? Of course. Each hunting experience is, by definition, an isolated incident. One hunter on one hunt making one mistake, and not even an illegal one at that, no more means that such things happen often than one hunter on one hunt cleanly killing an adult male bear would mean that it always happens that way. Perhaps of all the thousands of hunters in Ontario, this was the one who made an error, and an error that, while resulting in the death of a playful bear too small to provide much meat or a trophy, nevertheless did not leave any orphans (she was too young to have had cubs). No law was broken.

With hunters claiming "no" or "virtually no" orphaned cubs, and with orphaned cubs showing up at the very few overburdened, self-regulated, and financially strapped wildlife rehabilitation organizations available, who to believe? Are all orphaned cubs orphaned by something other than spring bear hunting? In fact most bears live in huge tracts of forested landscape, and most bear hunting takes place in such areas. The infrastructure that would allow injured or orphaned bears (or other animals) to be found or care for simply don't exist. There is no way to accurately monitor bear hunting or enforce regulations. Many spring bear hunters simply claim that everything was nonetheless quite alright, with no cubs orphaned.

Certainly one person we might choose to believe is Jim Morin, a retired hunting guide from Echo Bay, Ontario. He has been opposed to the spring bear hunt since, some years ago, he found the bloated carcass of a female, with two arrows sticking out of her corpse, and her two cubs trying to nurse themselves.

No doubt another "isolated incident."

The Numbers Game

Those of us who wanted to work to end the spring bear hunt realized early on that we would have to use the only source of figures there were, those of the provincial biologists who monitored the hunt, with the assistance of hunters themselves. What the MNR reported, and what was the basis of the figures used by animal protectionists, was that of the approximately 4,000 bears killed during the spring bear hunt each year, about 30% were females. And some of them would be of cub-bearing age. In a brilliant strategic move, Mike McIntosh, of the Bear With Us sanctuary and rehabilitation center for bears, challenged the MNR with a "guestimate" at the number of bears orphaned by the spring hunt.

In response to Mike's concern, MNR biologist Ken Morrison, a senior Ministry of Natural Resources biologist (now retired) came up with the maximum figure of 274 bear cubs orphaned each spring by the spring bear hunt. He didn't say that number would be orphaned, but rather, it was the maximum number that theoretically could be orphaned in a given spring bear hunt, as a "worst case scenario." He also calculated that such a number would not necessarily impact on the overall Ontario black bear population.

It is not a figure invented by the animal rights movement, but by a government bear biologist who later tried to downplay the figure by pointing out that it was a "maximum" estimate, never meant to be used by people trying to end the spring bear hunt. The fact is most people don't care. Even if the estimate was two or three times too high, no one likes the idea of orphaning even as few as a dozen or so dependent cubs.

Morrison is touted as a "hero" of the pro-spring hunt faction for denouncing use of his figures. But that misses the point; unless he was so inept as to calculate such a number as an extreme possibility when no cubs were orphaned, his figures surely show that cubs are orphaned. And most citizens simply don't like the idea of hunters orphaning bear cubs whether or not the number involved would have an impact on the overall bear population. In fact, most folks don't see much about the spring bear hunt that is worthwhile, other than its ability to pump cash into northern communities.

The Telephone Rings

It's true that about ten years ago three of us who were then working for the local humane society decided that the spring bear hunt was a valid target for elimination. But we lacked the support of our employer of the time and thus the resources to even think of making it happen. Unbeknownst to me, it was also around that time that Stan Pabst, of Friends of Bears, headquartered in Parry Sound, Ontario, began his long and tireless campaign to help bears.

Although I didn't know it at the time, a pivotal moment came about four years ago when, as I was rushing off on some errand, I received a fateful phone call. It was from someone representing Robert Schad, president of Husky Injection Moldings Inc. As I would later learn, it was an international company that made machinery that manufactures the molds from which a great many plastic products are formed. I was asked for the phone number of the Animal Alliance of Canada, founded a few years earlier by myself and a group of other animal protectionists to help animals, primarily through legislative reform.

The Alliance works as a cooperative and at the grassroots level. It seemed to me far too unlikely an organization to be of interest to a rich industrialist, and I said so, pointing out that the Alliance was not a registered charity precisely because it wanted the freedom to lobby on behalf of or against politicians. A charity is not allowed to support a political party even though its policies represent the charity's interests.

No, I was told, it was exactly what Schad was looking for precisely because the organization was so very political. I gave her the number and then left on my errand.

Schad soon provided the Alliance with funding to help start a grassroots level awareness campaign directed toward ultimately ending the spring hunt, the use of baits, and the use of dogs. I hasten to add that the Alliance, like API, opposes all sport hunting and that I, myself, was only minimally involved, as a Director of the Alliance (and sometimes helping reviewing reports and letters) and representing API. I was pleased to see the kind of funding such a campaign needed provided by Robert Schad. The Schad Foundation was ultimately set up to funnel funding into such campaigns, with Schad providing a generous 5% of his company's pre-tax profits for "environmental" campaigns.

The Bear Alliance of Canada was formed, of which API was an original member. Ultimately an unlikely mixture of both environmental and animal protection organizations, some members of The Bear Alliance, others not, became involved in various ways to varying degrees. These organizations included The International Fund for Animal Welfare and the World Wildlife Fund-Canada. The latter has always maintained that its concern is strictly for the survival of species (and, particularly in Canada, for the protection of representative ecosystem units) and not morality. However, Schad was on the Fund's advisory board, had deep and generous pockets, and somehow the World Wildlife Fund-Canada found itself championing the cause of baby bears, even though it was something of a stretch to say the black bear was endangered in Ontario. On the other hand, the American black bear, while certainly not endangered in Ontario, is nevertheless a potentially vulnerable species, given its low recruitment rate, the length of dependency cubs have on their mothers, its need for wilderness, the demand for bear parts for use in Asian medicine and the sad fate of so many bear species elsewhere in the world.

I should add that Monte Hummel, head of World Wildlife Fund-Canada, and his wife, Sherry Pettigrew, co-authored an important little book called Wild Hunters, Predators in Peril (Key Porter Books, 1991). It contains a frightening map, taken from a 1987 source produced by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ontario Trappers Association, that shows the astounding reduction of the range of the black bear in North America. As the authors say, "The black bear has disappeared from deforested areas in the eastern and central United States, and from most developed southern regions of Canada. Sadly, that means that even our most abundant top predator is gone from more than half its former range in North America."

Hummel and Pettigrew made an accurate prediction:

Black bears are abundant enough to withstand some hunting, but it is time to abolish or revise outdated practices that led to an excessively large number of black bears being killed in Canada. Even though such a move will be controversial and vigorously opposed, spring black bear-hunting seasons should not be continued. Fall hunting season-dates should be adjusted to protect female bears. Because female bears usually enter their hibernation dens before males, a later fall season should result in fewer females being killed ... If food conditions are poor, fewer bears should be killed as they reproduce more slowly under such circumstances. ... As with grizzly bears, allowance must also be made for additional kills through poaching and nuisance-bear removals. Illegal killing of black bears should be minimized by stepping up enforcement of hunting laws, which, in virtually all Canadian jurisdictions, means hiring more conservation officers.

In fact, even with the end of the spring bear hunt, pretty much the opposite has happened. The Ministry of Natural Resources has proposed moving the fall hunt forward, to begin as early as August 15. That puts both females and cubs at extra risk. As it is about 33% of bears shot in the fall are females. Cubs of the year are also legal game. There is certainly no fine-tuning of quotas to accommodate changes in food crops. There are so few Conservation Officers ("game wardens") in Ontario, and they are so poorly funded, that "enforcement of hunting laws" is virtually a sham. If any segment of the Ministry needed an economic shot in the arm, it's the Conservation Officers who must work under appalling conditions of underfunding.

Where Niagara Falls

With regard to orphaned bear cubs, things came to something of a head last year when two orphan bear cubs were picked up in Timmins, Ontario, where they had been foraging amid garbage when someone shot the mother. The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources used to fund either killing or relocation of "nuisance" bears, but that program had been effectively ended by budget cuts.

The cubs, quickly dubbed Fish and Chips (animal protectionists preferred to call them the Timmins Two) were moved by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources to Marineland Niagara Falls, a private aquarium and zoo not accredited with the Canadian Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums and recently given a negative review by another organization I happen to be a director of, Zoocheck-Canada.

Indeed, Zoocheck-Canada had just finished publishing a document called "Distorted Nature: Exposing the Myth of Marineland". With regard the American black bear exhibit at the park, Dr. Samantha Lindley, a veterinarian from the U.K. with extensive zoo evaluation experience, wrote:

Here we discover the only sign in the park and it tells us about the variation in colour of the black bears, that they are fed on meat, fish, fruit and vegetables but that they have been known to like sweets and honey. [Emphasis added.]

Such is the reasoning behind selling vast quantities of marshmallows to the public to spend the day feeding the bears. This in turn encourages them to beg and precipitates much aggression between competing individuals. There are many bears with torn ears and scars which is evidence of frequent fighting. The author counted twenty-nine bears which is far too high a number to have in such an enclosure.

There are only three den entrances visible and no areas of get-away or shelter either from the public or from other bears.

The enclosure is barren and the pool from which the bears beg is filthy, despite the fact that it appears to be their only source of drinking water.

In common with many such exhibits, the public look down on the bears which, due to their inability to escape scrutiny, is universally considered unacceptable by experts in bear husbandry.

Many of the bears are displaying stereotypic behaviours; those functionless, repetitive movements that initially arise from conflict and eventually signal the development of a psychosis. These behaviours are seen commonly in bears (and other species) in captivity and, far from being a sign of "coping" as is sometimes claimed, they can be more accurately described as a failure to cope and a reflection of mental suffering.

She went on to express concerns about the bears' overall health, particularly given their diet of sweets, and public safety as there were, she said, places where children could come into contact with the animals.

Brendan Price, founder of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group and the director of Ireland's only full time, professionally run Wildlife Hospital, Rescue and Rehabilitation Facility, and who was employed for nine years at the Dublin Zoo, took little time on his visit to observe the bears, but did note that the

... water in a moat from which bears begged for marshmallows appeared to be putrid. During my visit on August 30, 1996, one of the bears was killed by another bear in full view of the public. I arrived as the bear was being removed. There was still blood in the enclosure. I heard first-hand accounts from others who witnessed the incident.

Richard Farinato, of the Humane Society of the United States, had similar concerns to others about the health of the bears and public safety, noting:

There were at least 30 bears visible in this enclosure. ... Most were in various stages of molt and some had bald patches of skin showing. About 20 of them were in the moat, begging persistently for food. The public was able to lean over directly above the moat. A kiosk dispensed small marshmallows in sugar cones and the public fed both of these to the bears at a constant rate. There was no other type of food visible in the enclosure.

He describes the unprofessional manner in which the "dead body of a large bear" was removed and the overall lack of appropriate security, stating that, in his opinion,

The water quality in the moat, the visible lack of available clean drinking water, and the totally inadequate security arrangements would be cited as violations of American AWA standards for zoo animals.

Mike McIntosh is the founder of Bear With Us and also the director of the Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary's bear rehabilitation program. Understandably he focused on the bear exhibit. To concerns shared with others McIntosh added the observation:

There is no shade area from the sun that the bears are encouraged to occupy ... The absence of shade near the front of the enclosure, in addition to the glare off the water from the hot sun, is a threat to the bears' vision, and in fact, may have caused or contributed to vision problems including blindness which I observed in three bears during the 1994 visit.

He went on to say,

A continuous diet of marshmallows can be expected to cause severe tooth decay and gum disease. In some cases that I observed at Marineland, the bears' teeth have fallen out and the gums are extremely swollen and very sore looking. In my professional experience handling over 200 bears, I have never seen bears, either in the wild or in captivity, with teeth in such poor shape.

Get the Picture

In short, immediately after such concerns were raised, the Ontario government nevertheless placed these bears into the facility. Animal protectionist were outraged. API was one of an original group of seven animal protection groups (others later joined) who went public with their concerns over the welfare of Fish and Chips. Following a press conference at Queen's Park (the provincial capital building) Ainslie Willock took time from her ceaseless efforts to stop spring bear hunting to say that at the Marineland facility, the bears

are treated in a shocking and medieval way. There are no trees and absolutely no enrichment for the cubs who are basically in a moat up their chest in water.

While the owner of Marineland claimed that the bears had never had it so good, it was clear that the thought of the cubs growing up and eventually being put in such a controversial compound was an embarrassment to the Ministry. The Minister was between a rock and a hard place. Fish and Chips had not been orphaned by the spring bear hunt, but it was possible that they did owe the loss of their mother to provincial government cutbacks to funding to relieve bear/human conflicts. They certainly were symbols of bear orphaning by reason of mother bears being shot.

Eventually the bear cubs were removed from Marineland, with the owner's cooperation. The Ministry was mute about where they were rehabilitated, but did allow Mike McIntosh to check out the facility. His nod of approval satisfied the rest of us, and the intention is to release the bears this summer.

Exactly why the minister so abruptly ended the hunt would be an interesting subject to explore, but that is not my intention here. Certainly I possess no insider's information that would shed light on things, beyond what the Minister claimed, which was that the orphaning of cubs by hunters could not be stopped as long as there was a spring bear hunt. He also emphasized, many times, that the decision was a moral decision, not a conservation decision.

In fact it was what all such decisions can only be; a political decision, just like the decision that initiated the spring bear hunt in the first place, some 30 years earlier.

Notwithstanding my delight that the spring bear hunt has ended, I actually don't like the abrupt, cavalier way in which it was done, and yet it was a method typical of the right wing government of the day, whose budget slashing and ham-handed policies have put an awful lot of very good people providing services far more valuable to humanity than helping people kill bears into the ranks of the unemployed. That, too, is another issue.

So herewith is the part that I can reply to, part two of this column, designed to help animal protection activists to develop answers to their critics.

Obviously not everything that applies to this specific issue will apply to other issues, but the kind and nature of the arguments raised in opposition to the ban on spring bear hunt will, as any experienced animal protectionist will recognize, be the same kinds of arguments invariably raised in defense of maintaining the abusive status quo against any reform favoring animals or people.

Part Two

A brief word of explanation. Most of what follows are arguments raised in letters to the editor and columns in one newspaper, The Toronto Star, which is Canada's largest newspaper. I happen to have been a freelance columnist for The Toronto Star for over 20 years, and certainly in my column, "Nature Trail," I've had the chance to discuss the issue. But the column's word count is limited, and in fairness to readers with many and varied interests I'm certainly not going to devote the space that is possible on the Internet to this or any other single issue. Furthermore, it's not fair to the letter writers themselves. No matter how much I may disagree with them or their arguments, they have the right to express them without me taking advantage of my column to individually answer them.

Here, on the Internet, there is room for a relatively complete answer to the issues raised. I'll leave off names but will indicate where letters come from, as there is a strong tendency to paint the issue as the people of southern, industrialized and urbanized Ontario, where bears are scarce and meat comes wrapped in cellophane, versus the people of northern, rural Ontario, where there is still enough wilderness to sustain bears and bear hunters, but not the many means to earn livings that are (supposedly) available in the urban south.

I got the idea of writing this lengthy response on Saturday, January 30, 1999, when The Toronto Star devoted an entire page to letters on this single issue, both pro and con.

It started with a letter from Timmins (Northern) Ontario calling the hunt ban "an attack on consumption." "The banning of the spring bear hunt," it said, "really is an attack on hunting." It certainly is an attack on one very narrow form of hunting.

The writer continued:

For those who don't hunt and feel isolated from such a primitive action as hunting, this is an attack on consumptive use.

That sentence requires examination. I would call such things as food gathering (by whatever means) and eating, along with evacuating, making love, bearing and nurturing children, all "primitive" or "basic" actions. The high-tech aids that hunting employs are certainly not "primitive" in any sense of the word. There is nothing "primitive" about a high-powered rifle, an all-terrain vehicle, transcontinental air flights or pre-packaged meals, all of which contribute to the bear hunter's ability to be in the right circumstances to kill a bear.

The not-so-subtle intention of the sentence is to suggest those opposing the activity are out of touch with the origins of their food, wood-based products, and much else. I agree that most people spend most of their time not thinking about such things. And yet if we figure how many thousands of dollars it costs to fly to Canada to bag a bear and how much that equals in terms of dollars per pound of edible meat, bear hunting by non-residents becomes a very elitist, technology-dependent exercise. That does not mean that the writer is not correct in implying that most of us are detached from our food sources. Even vegetarians (of which I'm one) tend to ignore the farm-animal source of the manure that makes their food "organic." But neither does it justify an activity that may and sometimes does cause baby bears to be orphaned.

The letter goes on to say:

The end of the spring bear hunt was a carefully waged attack by the anti-use environmentalists. The attack was waged in Ontario for a little more than four years, using false messages to convince the average person that bears were being destroyed and, worst of all, the forest was full of orphaned cubs.

This is the kind of hyperbole that does neither side any good. If "our" side really acted as accused, no example was given. It's always hard to defend against such unspecified accusations. First of all, "anti-use environmentalist" is a new phrase that is a non-sequitur. I know of no environmentalist who fails to recognize that all human endeavor ultimately derives from use of the environment.

But environmentalists are, almost by definition, committed (as is supposed to be the government) to "sustainable" use. We could go on for hours defining what "sustainable" means, but it certainly means that any activity that removes living organisms from the environment does not remove so many as to endanger or eliminate populations. Bears, as a group, are notoriously vulnerable to over-exploitation, or "non-sustainable" use, so in that sense, yes, environmentalists oppose "non-sustainable" use. One way to achieve "non-sustainability" is to use wasteful "harvest" practices, such as destroying a sow with nursing young. It is true that if all figures about bear mortality and bear production and bear habitat are exactly right, such population decline is not a problem, or at least not a problem for which bear hunting is to blame in the province of Ontario. On the other hand, there is little if any margin for error, and certainly population declines are credited to bear hunting by some northerners in the province.

Additionally there are a few things that the hunters are ignoring. In 1998, the Ontario Provincial Auditor came down hard on the Ministry of Natural Resources by claiming the agency failed to produce the necessary data to show that game is being harvested sustainably. As one outdoor writer put it, we who are concerned about such things could have grounds for taking the Ministry to court. "If the auditor is right, the court will have little choice but to rule that the harvest be halted or curtailed until the science is done. That's precisely what a court should do if the harvest of any fish or game species can't be shown to be sustainable."

The hunters, themselves, want to have it both ways. On one hand they argue hunting does not decrease bears; on the other hand, they argue that in the absence of the spring component of bear hunting, bears will so increase as to be a hazard to people in the woods. If the latter contention has merit, then hunting is artificially depressing bear populations, keeping them lower than they would otherwise be. That is certainly a first step on the road to endangerment. Given the unregulated and uncountable take of bears that are poached, there is potential for a problem even if it is not in everyone's interest to recognize that potential.

As no specific text is cited, that's about as far as I can go in answering the accusation. If anyone said that the spring bear hunt was exterminating the black bear in Ontario, I didn't see it. If anyone said that the number of bears killed by hunters and poachers concerned them, then yes, that was an observation, but one that was at the most tangential to the real concern, that of engaging in an activity that orphaned bear cubs. I suspect that some organizations, such as the Federation of Ontario Naturalists, the World Wildlife Fund-Canada and The International Fund for Animal Welfare, emphasized their concern about population depletion to distance themselves from the "animal rights" advocates, in part, and because the concerns do at least have a modicum of validity. Certainly the best possible time to protect any species is well before there becomes any real concern that it is threatened or at risk due to low numbers.

And it should be pointed out that among the "anti-use environmentalists" who expressed their desire to see an end to the spring bear hunt (and, in their case, all sport hunting of bears) were aboriginal people of Ontario, who, for thousands of years, have most certainly been consumptive users of the environment. There was, and in many cases still is, no other way to survive but from direct use. The writer's argument will make sense to those who agree with his basic premise that the spring bear hunt ought not to have been canceled. To me it makes no sense.

The writer points out that Members of Parliament (MPPs) in the most populated part of the province were targeted for "lobbying." Actually that's not correct. To the best of my knowledge they were selected for defeat at the next election. In other words animal protectionists knew that most people in Ontario, upon learning of the hunt (previously it was not widely known) opposed it. The animal protectionists also knew that by mounting campaigns in those ridings where the incumbent member of the ruling Progressive Conservative ("Tory") party had won by a small margin, they could influence the government. Many of the key people in the anti-spring bear hunt campaign were, in fact, active members of the Tory party.

The letter continues:

The people in rural Ontario knew very little about this campaign. Nobody took up the fight and it looks like nobody cared about the issue.

Exactly. The Ontario Federation of Ontario Anglers and Hunters certainly knew about the both the campaign and the issue and often brags about being the largest "conservation" organization in the province. The Provincial Wildlife Advisory Board, appointed by the Premier of Ontario, and consisting entirely of people who support hunting and fishing, also knew about the ban and opposed it. I would suggest that the pro-hunt side had some pretty powerful assets. But they represented a minority opinion among the electorate.

The Tories do a lot of things I don't like and have made a lot of decisions I disagree with (and some I do agree with). I didn't vote for them and I won't vote for them in the next election. But they would not be in power with a majority government but for the support of just under half the people of Ontario in the last election (we have a multi-party system with three strong parties, so it's possible to win a majority while still only winning less than half of the popular vote). They won a clear majority of seats with policies over half of Ontarians did not accept, but that is the way of politics. The Tories did win enough seats to form a majority government. By challenging some of those seats the animal protectionists at least got the Tories' attention, and perhaps won the day for the anti-spring bear hunt, representing the majority of voters in the ridings selected, and for the province overall.

I would not disagree that the fact that there are "maybe 1,500 to 2,000 bear outfitters" in Ontario and that most bear hunters are not Ontario residents and therefore not voters, as the letter points out. And I would not disagree that the ban was a "political decision." The decision, some 30 years ago, to have a spring bear hunt was also a "political decision." It is impossible for there to be even the most minor legislative change made without a "political decision" being made. Unless we dump democratic government in favor of autocratic decisions determining the laws, that is how things are. If being a political decision makes it wrong, then so was the political decision that allowed the hunt in the first place wrong.

The letter deteriorates into absolute absurdity when it states:

A legal business based on a renewable resource is being made illegal because of environmentalists whose sole goal is to end hunting, fishing, trapping, farming, mining, the lumber industry or, in short, consumptive use.

The problem here is that the writer sees any control on any profit-making enterprise as being based on a desire to destroy the entire enterprise. Those environmentalists who do not oppose hunting, fishing and trapping certainly want such activities to be sustainable, while most animal protectionists want them stopped, particularly if they are done for fun or profit (as opposed to subsistence, and even that should be sustainable or eventually everyone loses). Farming, mining and lumbering must, environmentalists and most of the public think, be controlled to minimize damage to the environment's ability to sustain life. We have enough examples of horrible things happening in the lack of such controls to appreciate the necessity of regulatory bodies. That the writer does not make this distinction is his problem.

But in full pursuit of his hobby horse he goes on to say,

The blow to our economy is real. The loss of jobs is real. Everyone is affected by this political decision.

Actually far more people are effected by dozens of other "political" decisions made by this and every other government, but never mind; having uncovered his conspiracy the writer concludes: "You may think you can turn a blind eye to this attack on hunting because you don't pursue this activity, but do not be fooled.

This is a war and you already have lost the battle. Your rights and your children's rights have already been taken away.

Ironic that our right to influence government is not acknowledged as a "right" when it hurts this gentleman's very narrow interest.

Flushed Down the Toilet

Prominently featured in the middle of the same page is an article from an outfitter concerned that

Premier Mike Harris has sold out the North and flushed our businesses and jobs down the toilet so that he can keep his. We are his sacrificial lambs.

I doubt that this writer showed such concern when the Tories put large numbers of nurses out of work, but never mind. The Harris government's only response to concerns about job losses is that in balance a greater number of jobs is being created as a result of government policies. Many of us might prefer to live far from the stresses and dangers of the urban and suburban landscape, but we can't expect to do so just because we would prefer the lifestyle. If something is wrong, it's wrong, and the values of the society in which that something occurs determine what is wrong, as reflected in law, in a democratic society.

The letter goes on to say that there are "very few, if any" cubs orphaned by the spring bear hunt. The letter writer then asks

Why bother having biologists on staff, if you are not going to heed their advice? Since the ban on shooting sows with cubs have been implemented, there has only been one charge laid.

She has, of course, put her finger on the concern many of us have expressed: the ban on shooting sow bears with dependent cubs was unenforceable. The Conservation Officers of Ontario are no doubt dedicated and courageous, but they are pathetically few in number and grossly under-funded. For years we've been hearing grim tales of budgets so low that Conservation Officers can't even put gasoline in their cars to investigate complaints. There is simply no way that they can patrol so vast a region as the bush country of the Province, a province larger than Alaska. And as the Minister of Natural Resources said, even one orphaned cub is one too many.

The outfitter's letter continues,

There is more orphaning of cubs through cannibalism and being hit by trains and cars, so think twice about dumping on the backs of outfitters.

She may be right about the number of bears orphaned by cars, trains or "cannibalism," or she may be wrong. I know of no definitive study that would provide an answer, and certainly she cites none. But even if more sow bears with dependent cubs are killed by cars, trains, and other bears than were killed by spring bear hunters (and I wouldn't argue otherwise), how on earth does that justify the orphaning of even a single cub?

I would not kill any bear for sport or a trophy, and I do not share the values of those who do, but it is a practice that society, in balance, accepts. However, doing this in a way that risks killing a bear with dependent cubs is as reprehensible as deliberately killing a bear with a car. I doubt that anyone does that, and even if someone does do that, it still does not justify yet another "wrong" thing, as "wrong" is socially defined. Two wrongs still don't make a right.

The letter writer complains that she's lost $40,000 per spring, plus

the value of the business, our good name in the tourist industry and all the subsequent years of business. As fellow residents of our great province of Ontario, we deserve the right to make a living.

Of course no such right has been denied. She has as much right to earn a living as I do, but no more right to earn a living by breaking the law than I do, and no more guarantee that she can do as she pleases than is true of me or any other citizen. If she's concerned about the abruptness of the transition, so am I, but I've been similarly concerned over thousands of other job losses throughout Ontario, and I don't think that this outfitter is any more worthy of employment than any of the nurses or teachers we've lost as a result of government policy.

She complains that she had planned to hand the business down to her daughters, as it had been handed down to her by her father, who started it all 40 years ago, with her family in the north since 1910. My father sold coal-burning home furnaces. Society, passing ever more laws about air quality, killed the business. He dealt with a product that eventually had no market. I don't recall anyone caring.

I like people. I'm sorry that this outfitter has to dip into her children's education funds to "pay bills and buy groceries." I recall similar deprivation from my youth. I don't like it, but I don't see why this writer thinks she, and her profession, should be singled out for the kind of consideration the rest of us don't enjoy or experience.

Turkey Next?

Another writer, from Porcupine, in northern Ontario, states

What amazes me is that other political leaders have not countered these [hunt-banning] initiatives as issues of willful manipulation of law.

This person should not be so amazed. There are probably two good reasons why there has been no such reaction.

First, political leaders don't get to be political leaders by bucking widespread public opinion, and they know perfectly well that the spring bear hunt ban has widespread public support.

Second, because no matter how many of us object to the way in which this government does things, it is within the law. Law was not manipulated, it was changed through a regulatory methodology that is perfectly legal, or at least which must be deemed legal unless or until it is successfully challenged in court.

The writer goes on to say,

Affected by the tactics of these groups [opponents to the spring bear hunt] are beef and pork suppliers, shoe manufacturers and the family dog ... Say goodbye to the Christmas turkey, hamburgers and, soon in line, regular licenses for moose hunting.

There are, of course some vegan animal rights advocates who would hope he is correct. Indeed, I'd have no problem with such bans, except that they could only work if they had widespread public support. That is the point this overworked line of argument chronically overlooks. The spring bear hunt has nothing to do with most people and is repugnant to most people, and thus the ban is supported by most people. If, as a society, we live in fear that any regulation that reflects majority opinion is the "thin edge of the wedge" that will result in regulations that defy majority opinion, and act according to that fear, than all social reform would grind to a halt.

But I suspect the letter writer realizes all of this at some level of awareness, for the letter concludes,

If you regularly eat, sell groceries, wear a belt or send products by freight, it is time to realize the economic implications. Stand up and voice an opinion. Call your representatives. After all, this is your life.

I suspect most folks don't share such fanaticism, and rightly understand that they will continue to eat, or hold their pants up, or wear shoes.

A letter from Richmond Hill, an urban community just north of Toronto, also uses the "thin edge of the wedge" argument:

What will be next [to be banned]: hunting moose and deer; ducks and geese; swatting flies? Where will it end?

The answer, in a democratic society, is always the same. It will end where the greatest public support is. The same concerns of any reform leading to socially destructive and extreme reforms attach to all social reform, and always have.

After arguing that the groups involved in supporting the spring bear hunt ban won't stop until all hunting is banned, the writer says,

As a result, the ministry of natural resources will need to create an alternative method of financing the feeding of ever-growing numbers of animals, as the wildlife habitat to support them naturally disappears.

The thought processes behind this argument are obscure. By "animals" I suspect this person refers only to game. And I suspect, as well, that he has bought into the "wise use" argument that only by placing such a materialistic value on animals as happens when they are designated as "game," is there incentive to protect the habitat they require for survival, with other species requiring the same habitat incidentally benefitting.

It certainly has happened. It was an elite, private hunt club in Ontario that managed to save the great Long Point marshes of Lake Erie, which currently host huge numbers of many kinds of animals, but would almost certainly have long since been dredged or land-filled or toxified by industrial wastes into oblivion, but for the hunters. The problem is that for every such success story there are dozens of failures. Ontario's southern forests, like those of much of eastern temperate North America, are long gone, as there was greater value to be derived from their destruction, than from their protection (and the protection of the "game" within, also long gone). Try finding an "old growth" white pine, our provincial tree (and important, incidentally, to black bears) in Ontario. Most were of such value for masts used in the 18th and 19th century British Navy that they were gone by the start of the current century. Environmentalists have been waging fierce battles to save what few old growth pines remain precisely because they are valuable as lumber.

I suspect, as well, the writer is vaguely alluding to the Ontario government's tolerance of winter deer feeding programs. That, too, is deserving of examination as a separate issue, but here I will be brief. Ontario encompasses the northern edge of the natural range of the white-tailed deer. Severe winters tax them and cause mortality from starvation, disease or predation if the snow lies too deep and severe cold lingers too long. At such times the deer "yard" into large groups and have little movement, to conserve energy. Of course hunters often seem to consider any form of "natural" death to be repugnant to the degree that it removes a future target. They never express such concern for non-game animals, but when it comes to deer they seek to decrease winter mortality by feeding the deer. Unfortunately that tricks the does' bodies into reacting as though there were not severe conditions. Does become fecund, bucks robust, and birth rate increases as though the deer were in a far more supportive environment than is really the case apart from the hunter-supplied winter "subsidy."

That, of course, creates yet more deer than the land can sustain, allowing hunters to claim "overpopulation," which, of course, deer hunting, as a "wildlife management tool," seeks to redress.

At times the Ministry of Natural Resources has fed the deer, or provided assistance to hunters doing so, but believe me, does not provide such "thoughtful" assistance to the vast majority of wildlife species. Whether or not that is what the writer had in mind, I don't know. Whatever it was, it represents the kind of emotional, fuzzy thinking that plagues any such debate on those very rare occasions when laws extending protection to animals are passed.

The letter from Richmond Hill continues, claiming that revenue generated by the hunt will have to be made up from taxpayers' pockets. That's right. It's the same argument that could be made for legalizing marijuana or other drugs currently illegal. The "rightness" or "wrongness" of doing so is for society to determine. Personally I'd rather see cannabis legalized as a cash crop than see spring bear hunting, but that does not make it "right" or mean it "should" happen. The debate on that issue is ongoing, but the point I'm making is that if revenue, alone, were the criteria by which such decisions were made, cannabis would long ago have been made into a legal enterprise.

It is also sad to think that the people involved in the industry can think of no alternatives. However, I'm not facile in thinking that "eco-tourism" is the answer. For a few, yes -- I suspect a well set up program would more than compensate for lost revenues, but it takes more effort and intelligence, more understanding of the environment to develop an eco-tourism business than is required to set up a successful bear hunt. I think some who try will prosper, but for most I don't think it is a viable option.

The writer somewhat naively states:

My view as a taxpayer is that when the government makes a decision, it should be accountable for the consequences.

In fact, that is exactly what will happen. The government knows perfectly well that it must soon face the voters (an Ontario provincial election is soon to be held) and if the voters don't like the things the government does, or the way it does them, they will vote for a party that gives them what they want. Again and again all the people protesting the decision to end the spring bear hunt miss the point that it the decision was made out of respect of the wishes of the majority of the electorate.

A friend of mine, who, unlike myself or many of my Ontario-based friends, supports the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, explained the abruptness of the decision to end the spring bear hunt to me thus:

It was the right thing to do, so it was done. There was no need for consultation or study. The spring bear hunt was wrong, so it was ended.

Of course the fact that it was "wrong" would not have ended it if the vast majority of Ontario citizens had continued to be unaware of it, or its consequences. It was the animal protection movement, in an advocacy role, that made that awareness happen, bankrolled by the Schad Foundation.

There were lots of letters praising the decision to end the spring bear hunt on the same page, some as guilty of fuzzy thinking as those who opposed. The remaining letter hostile to the spring bear hunt ban also showed the kind of naivete that is as sad as it is surprising. It, too, came from Timmins, in northern Ontario.

The Harris government's decision to halt the spring bear hunt is," it says, "a profoundly disturbing one. ... It was based on the lobbying of a few hundred people, out of a province of 10 million.

Frankly, I doubt that even a fraction of that number was involved in actual lobbying. Lobbyists traditionally represent a variety of interests, but when a spokesperson for a given cause speaks to an elected official or a government bureaucrat, it is understood that she or he does so on behalf of a constituency. In this case the "constituency" was the number of people who oppose the spring bear hunt. The Tories were shown that the number was very high -- high enough to lose them votes, if the resources to campaign on the issue were there. With the Schad Foundation's backing, they were.

The letter goes on to say,

It ignored the economic impact on the North.

I would argue that it considered the economic impact on the North and decided to go for being returned to power by catering to the voters in the south. Nothing new there.

The letter continues,

It ignored the fact that Ontario's black bear management has maintained a perfectly healthy population that needs no further protection.

There is, of course, nothing healthy about an orphaned cub or a shot bear. However, the government reiterated again and again that the decision was not based on conservation concerns, but on a moral issue -- the desire to reduce cub orphaning caused by the deliberate shooting of bears in the spring because all indications were as long as you have a spring bear hunt, you are going to have orphaned bear cubs.

But the decision was made in a hurry, the letter says

and in the complete absence of public consultation.

In fact the opposition to the spring bear hunt was as widely known as animal protectionists could make it. The Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters certainly knew what was happening and had every opportunity to oppose it. There simply was not widespread support for opposing it. Even among sport hunters bear hunters are a minority, and many sport hunters find the concept of shooting a baited animal to be objectionable.

The letter says that the decision to end the spring bear hunt

was nothing more than a blatant attempt to curry favour with voters before the next election.

You bet, just like all other government decisions.

On February 22, 1999, The Toronto Star devoted the better part of its "Letters to the Editor" page to the issue again, with 7 of 11 letters devoted to the issue, pro and con.

Across the top of the page is a letter from an angry American in Eastford, Connecticut. He again displays a strange attitude toward the democratic system. After expressing general anger, the letter states,

So why are U.S. hunters so outraged over Snobelen's announcement?

It's because Snobelen even made such an announcement. In our losses, our wildlife and natural resources leaders vehemently opposed any season closure or loss of hunting opportunities.

That, of course, suggests to me that the "wildlife and natural resources leaders" in question were dogmatic. Their bias precluded them from considering the opinion of the majority of citizens.

The letter continues,

In those states, we lost on a popular vote (not by direct political action).

An interesting comment. The "ballot initiatives" to which the writer refers are effectively not an option here in Canada. But they are no less "political" than what he calls "direct political action." Either way, the appeal is to the electorate.

The letter writer, perhaps unknowingly, manages to insult Canadians by saying,

U.S. hunters see this decision as a direct assault on our heritage.

With all due respect, to him Ontario is part of a foreign country and whatever a citizen of Connecticut may consider to be his "heritage," Canadians are willing and able to plot their own courses. Apart from that, the spring bear hunt is not a long-term "tradition." It has not even lasted a single generation. Three decades do not a heritage make.

After one or two more insults against Ontario Minister of Resources, John Snobelen, the letter asks a number of points.

Why won't Snobelen produce scientific data to justify the closure?

Simple. They don't exist. What data do exist, the Ministry's own biologist's estimate of a "worst case" scenario, plus the, , reports from regional offices and the concerns of wildlife rehabbers, all indicate that there is a problem, as do studies elsewhere. The fact that only one charge has been laid underscores what the Minister knows; enforcement of the prohibition against shooting "wet sows" (nursing mother bears) is not possible. He understands that whatever the gentleman from Connecticut may think, most voters in Ontario don't like the spring bear hunt, don't want it, and support the decision to ban it.

Why did Snobelen's own appointed board member resign in protest?

The board in question, an advisory board, is entirely stacked with pro hunting and fishing types. They do not represent either the majority of Ontarians nor even the majority of "stakeholders" with an interest in the environment and wildlife. As a politician, Snobelen is well aware of that. Snobelen wants to consider the interests of the majority of voters, not just a hand-picked board of like-minded individuals.

Why does Snobelen continue to quote figures that were deemed bogus by its very author.

I don't know if the man from Connecticut realizes it, but he's just called the biologist we are now supposed to believe a liar. Why publish "bogus" figures? What the biologist has said is that the figure represents the worst case scenario. What Snobelen has said is that "one" cub orphaned as a result of the spring bear hunt is one cub too many.

The letter, presumably written in ignorance of the labor unrest the current government has generated in so many sectors, asks,

Why does the government continue to mislead those families hardest hit in Northern Ontario with promises of eco-tourism when we all know that will never happen?

He doesn't. I'm the last person to defend a Tory Minister, but I must be fair. Snobelen has pointed out that while revenues have increased in Colorado after spring bear hunting was ended, he can't say the same will happen in Ontario.

However, no one would have predicted that the remote community of Churchill, Manitoba, would be so successful at parlaying its population of polar bears into a world-famous tourist attraction that sees every accommodation filled at a time when normally there was no other source of revenue, and no one could have predicted the popularity of beluga watching in the same community. I think there is ample room for entrepreneurs to capitalize on eco-tourism focused on black bears, but to be really successful would require more skills and knowledge than is required to set up a successful spring bear hunt, and would cater to a more discerning clientele. Defeatism won't help.

Why does the closure have to take place this spring? If Snobelen cared, why not give these small businesses a year for transition?

In response to that question I can only cite my Tory-loving friend, that if something is wrong it should be stopped. That simple. In fact, there will be an election between this spring and next and to win it the Tories need all the support they can get. That means that they don't want the Schad Foundation money being used to oppose selected members of their party. Politicians know that the difference between wining and losing is often very slight.

Why [continues the letter, becoming almost sadly naive] would Snobelen not be concerned about a backlash from U.S. sportsmen that may include fall bear, moose, deer, even fishing?

Apparently the writer's objection to Snobelen hurting small businesses does not apply to "U.S. sportsmen" doing the same thing. The fact is that U.S. sportsmen don't vote in Ontario elections, but, having killed off so much of their own wildlife (or failed to protect it from various forms of environmental degradation) if they want to kill things, they'll have to go to where the opportunities exist to do so.

Why did Snobelen announce extended fall bear hunting opportunities when he admitted that the spring bear hunt was less likely to orphan bear cubs -- his reason for ending the spring season in the first place?

Good question. I suspect because he knows that the opposition was targeted at the spring bear hunt as an obvious source of bear cub orphaning. But not only is it unfortunate that he bent to hunting pressure to the degree that he extended the fall season, he extended it "forward" into August, when there are still many tourists in Ontario woods.

Humans at Risk

There were other letters and comments, most of them repetitive, but the last concern, the one of extending the fall hunt, curiously addresses one other major argument used against the closing of the spring bear hunt: that of putting people at risk.

The scenario here is that by banning the spring bear hunt, the government put humans at increased risk of bear attack.

Black bears can attack and even kill humans.

But they very rarely do. I live in a peaceful suburban community, but in the last five years there has been an average of one person murdered each year. One of those years no one was murdered, but the next year a father killed his son and himself, to make up that average. I feel safe in my town, yes, but I feel much safer when I'm in the north woods, complete with bears.

Of course there are many more people here than there. That's the point. People are far more dangerous than bears. And yet we learn to live with the risks. Cars are vastly more dangerous than bears, even killing more people than warfare, and yet most of us will cross a road on foot or drive on the highway but would not willingly enter a warzone.

Last summer the wife of a friend of mine died suddenly, in the midst of bear country. She was killed by an animal that kills more people than do bears: a hornet. You are more likely to be killed by lightning than by a bear. It's not that there's "no" risk from black bears, but there is relatively little risk compared to other things we do routinely, such as taking showers or driving to the local shopping mall or hiking where there are hornets.

But there is increased risk when people with guns are allowed in the bush before the summer tourist season ends. Canadians don't share the devotion to guns one finds in the U.S. Rifles and shotguns will soon have to be registered. Assault weapons and most handguns are already effectively banned. We recognize the right not to be shot as being greater than any "right to bear arms." That said, there are still gun "accidents" and they all too often involve "sporting" arms.

I won't go into a deer woods during deer hunting season, and I'd be nervous about entering the bush during the bear season. The idea of chasing bears with dogs while a family is trying to enjoy a nature hike during the summer school break is repugnant even to folks not particularly opposed to bear hunting in general.

There have also been concerns raised that the act of baiting bears teaches them to seek out such artificial sources of food. Already campers know better than to keep food in their tents, but if there is risk from bears it's exacerbated by teaching bears to come to baits.

The argument is countered by those who say that bait sets attract bears away from human communities in the north, thus serve to protect people.

It's all very emotional and lacking in hard data.

The bottom line remains, however, that most of us living in the province, whatever our political affiliations, support the government's ban on the spring bear hunt.

Yep, it's a political decision, as are all decisions made by all governments in democratic societies. Note to sport hunters: Get used to it.