Environmental Issues in Northern Ontario
Bear Relocation Campaign
Re-introduce Black Bears to Southern Ontario
Proposed:
Re-introduce black bears to southern Ontario
Atikokan Progress
published March 7, 2005.
By Jessica Smith
While a recent proposal
to round up some of northern Ontario’s black bears and relocate them to
the southern part of the province was publicly rejected by Minister of
Natural Resources David Ramsay, creators of the proposal John Kaplanis
and Eldon Hawton say the campaign is just getting warmed up.
“We’re not backing down
on this issue,” said Northwestern Ontario Sportsmen’s Alliance (NOSA)
president John Kaplanis, who put the proposal to Ramsay a few weeks
back. Following the minister’s rejection of the proposal in a CBC radio
interview, Kaplanis said lobby efforts would not only continue, but
increase.
“If the ministry keeps
slamming the door on organizations like ours who are trying to raise
awareness to the problem of nuisance bears, we’re going to have no
choice, but to escalate our lobby efforts.”
Trapping organization
Friends of Fur president Eldon Hawton, who along with the Thunder
Bay-based NOSA has spearheaded this campaign, echoes Kaplanis’
sentiment.
“We’re going to push
forward. The salesman’s job starts when the customer says no,” said
Hawton.
The campaign has
included billboards and posters displaying a black bear standing by the
CN tower in an effort to publicize nuisance bear concerns, which is seen
as the result of the cancellation of the spring bear hunt in 1999 in
Ontario.
“People in the north
have reacted to it (the campaign) with an absolutely astoundingly
positive response. They’re ecstatic that someone is still lobbying the
government to try to get our spring bear hunt back,” said Kaplanis.
Quetico North has one
of the posters and co-owner Wendy Taylor says the poster has caught the
attention of locals and passers-through.
“Some people have
picked up the flyer and are interested in carrying on with it.”
She added that some
have taken the flyers to pass along to friends, and many say southerners
are unaware of frustrations felt by northerners around nuisance bears
and the cancellation of the spring bear hunt.
“They feel that it’s
not being understood in Southern Ontario,” said Taylor.
Kaplanis compares the
reintroduction proposal to programs that have reintroduced wild turkey
and elk to southern Ontario and said this proposal is just a way to
share northern Ontario’s ‘excess bears’ with southern Ontario.
“We just felt as an
organization, that a society where all critters large and small are
valued, could accept black bears close to urban centres the same way we
do up here in the north,” said Kaplanis.
MNR spokesperson Jolata
Kowalski however, is not ready to take the proposal seriously.
“Mr. Kaplanis denies
this but it sounds a bit like a publicity stunt to me,” said Kowalski.
“As the minister said in his interview with CBC, there are no fences.
The bears can come here if they want. The habitat just isn’t right for
them down here anymore. They need a lot of room. Bears range a large
area and they don’t have that here anymore.”
Kowalski also said
there have been bear sightings in southern Ontario areas such as
Orangeville and Guelph.
While the proposal has
generated amusement among some northerners, Kaplanis said the issue of
nuisance bears is no laughing matter.
“It’s pushing to the
point that we’re getting reports from cottagers, home owners and even
young families living right in the city centres of Thunder Bay, Atikokan,
Dryden and so on, that they’re encountering bears in their backyards
while their kids are out playing. It’s a public safety concern now,” he
said. “For many years when we had the spring bear hunt, we had poor
berry crops. Yet the level of nuisance bears is nothing like what we
have today.”
Kowalski called
Kaplanis’ claim, “Nonsense.”
“I could show you an
article from Sudbury from back in 1980, detailing huge problems they
were having with nuisance bears,” said Kowalski.
“There were problems
when there was a spring bear hunt; there are problems when there isn’t.
Natural food varies.”
Kowalski points to the
Bear Wise program, implemented this past spring, as a help to the
ministry in establishing accurate figures for nuisance bear complaints
in northern Ontario. “The Bear Wise phone line is a huge help because
now it can tell us which is the busy location, which is the quiet one,”
said Kowalski.
“Now we have official
data that we can compare.”
Kaplanis called the
program, which cost the province just over $5 million, a ‘liability.’
“Before when we had the
spring bear hunt, we had an economy and tourism benefit, bringing money
into the province and not costing the taxpayer a dime. It was the most
effective bear management tool going.”
According to Hawton the
reintroduction proposal has been the only alternative when opposition
parties won’t take the issue to Parliament on behalf of northerners who
are fed up with the bears.
“The opposition parties
should be going to parliament and pounding the table on our behalf. We
have all these bears in a strip from Ottawa straight across to Kenora
and there’s Howard Hampton in the Kenora/Rainy River riding, and if
there isn’t a bear problem in that area, there isn’t anywhere, and he’s
not saying a word,” said Hawton. “What are we to do?”
NDP leader Howard
Hampton said he met with MNR officials about the proposal.
“One of the things we
were told is the problem with much of southern and central Ontario is a
lack of habitat. Development is so intense that you just don’t have the
bear habitat anymore.”
Hampton said Minister
Ramsay promised to reinstate the spring bear hunt prior to the election
and after the election said he was opposed to reinstating the hunt.“I
think that’s what sticks in people’s craw,” he added.
Hampton said his
approach to the spring bear hunt is to see what transpires with regard
to bear populations and the level of nuisance bear activity.
“Part of this is wait
and see. MNR insists, the government insists that bear populations
aren’t growing that fast. We will wait and see on that,” said Hampton.
“Would I reinstate the
spring bear hunt today? No, I wouldn’t. But some of this is in terms of
bear population and how bears interact with people.”
Meanwhile, Hawton said
he has spent the winter travelling across the province meeting with
residents and citizens’ groups to make people aware of the campaign and
the issues. A billboard campaign is also planned, including a billboard
being set up somewhere in the Toronto area.
Although southern
Ontario might not see truckloads of black bears headed their way anytime
soon, Hawton and Kaplanis aren’t calling it quits.
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