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Northern Ontario Environmental Issues
MNR says no thanks to bear relocation
plan
By Bryan Meadows -
The Chronicle-Journal
Thunder Bay-based Northwestern Ontario Sportsmen’s Alliance wants the
Ministry of Natural Resources to establish a black bear reintroduction
program for southern Ontario.
The ministry doesn’t seem interested.
NOSA president John Kaplanis has asked Natural Resources Minister David
Ramsay to relocate bears from Northern Ontario to areas in southern
Ontario where they once thrived.
The plan would be similar to the ministry’s successful wild turkey and
elk reintroduction programs.
In a letter to Ramsay, Kaplanis states the move is seen as a viable
solution to the increasing number of nuisance bears across the North.
“The MNR should implement a full scale black bear reintroduction
strategy as part of its ongoing Bear Wise program,” he said.
NOSA and a trapping group called Friends of Fur is spearheading the
initiative on behalf of a coalition of Northern Ontario groups and
individuals.
Kaplanis says bears were exterminated in much of southern Ontario
because they were considered “pests, a liability, a danger that humans
could not share the landscape with.
“But now that society values all creatures . . . is it not reasonable to
ask the people of southern Ontario to let bears back into their
historical range,” he writes. “(Shouldn’t) these people be willing to
accept ‘living with the bears’, as we have been asked to do in the
North.”
MNR spokeswoman Jolanta Kowalski said the ministry isn’t interested in
the proposal.
“We are not about to entertain that idea at all,” she said, adding
southern Ontario has black bears that have been spotted in cities like
Guelph and Orangeville.
NOSA and coalition members plan to erect a billboard and signs to draw
public attention to bear problems and the proposed reintroduction plan.
Groups like NOSA and the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters have
blamed an increase in bear/human encounters on the elimination of the
spring bear hunt five years ago, but the MNR disagrees. The ministry
says it’s a matter of food availability and bear attractants causing the
problem.
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Black bears that once roamed all of Ontario are
now completely extinct in southern Ontario
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