British Columbia is nearing the finish line on a new strategy to manage the province’s population of grizzly bears.
An in a step away from how the province has traditionally managed its wildlife populations, the new Grizzly Bear Stewardship Framework and Commercial Bear Viewing Strategy will be Indigenous-led.
“As an Indigenous person, we are born conservationists, because our lessons come from the land, all of our words come from the land, our relationship is to the land, and our respect is to the land,” said Michelle Edwards, Tmicw Coordinator for the St’at’imc Chiefs Council.
“We actually can teach government how to use our framework to do the job out there, and I think it has been a long time coming.”
Grizzly bears are listed as a “species of special concern” in Canada, and while there are an estimated 15,000 of the animals in B.C., in some areas they are verging on endangered.
The province’s grizzly bear conservation strategy is three decades old, and a 2017 auditor general’s report found the province wasn’t using it and was failing at habitat protection.
That’s something Edwards believes First Nations can help with.
“But we had to go out and enhance the land, enhance the habitat, provide another food source for the grizzly bears. If we didn’t do that they would have starved,” she said.
“If you need to create habitat, well we have done that for 15 years, now we can show you how we have done it — but it doesn’t just take that, you also have to close roads, you have to work with forestry, you have to work with miners, you have to work with guide outfitters.”
The new strategy has been in the works for years, a process that began with talks between the province and Indigenous groups, before opening to consultation from the public, stakeholders and non-profits.
Some 85 First Nations have been involved in forming the framework, and now it is headed back to an Indigenous roundtable for a final round of consultation before adoption.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of the Grizzly Bear Foundation, called the approach “exciting,” adding that it would bring together western science-based approaches to management with Indigenous knowledge, while respecting First Nations rights and title.
“You know, this idea of stewardship is a very different perspective on how we coexist and respect grizzly bears and any other species,” he said.
“Indigenous voices are leading that process today to convey that to government, to show how important the grizzly bear is no only as an ecological keystone species, but as an important and critical to their culture.”
British Columbia banned trophy hunting of grizzly bears in 2017.
Some conservation groups fear that new local and regional wildlife committees envisioned under the framework could open the door to the hunt being reopened in some parts of the province, penning a letter to the province in 2023 raising their concerns.
In the run-up to the 2024 provincial election, the BC NDP campaigned on protecting the ban, alleging the BC Conservatives would repeal it if elected.
“We introduced the ban on grizzly hunting in British Columbia. That was a unanimous, almost widespread public ask of government at that time,” Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship Ranene Neill said.
“Since then, I think the way that the grizzly bear foundation has brought this round table together, it’s really a First Nations-led approach to how we want to value the grizzly bear, and we honour that. We did it carefully, we did it with a lot of thought, and we did it with the intention of the Grizzly Bear leading this process, and that is why we are now in the final stages.”
Scapillati said he hopes the new framework will be finalized before the end of the year, at which point the work of implementing it on the ground will begin.