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It is indeed a problem when a grizzly bear tries to rip open the window or door to your house. It is however a bigger problem when man fishes Sockeye Salmon to the low level that causes both human and bear to go hungry in the winter. Do any one of these individuals stop to think that their act affects us all? Or do they even care? As long as we get our limit does it matter that there are 1000's of others getting theirs and the combined effort depletes our world supply. So far there have been 9 grizzly killed because the fish have been commercially harvested or sports fished to a level where everyone suffers both animal (who are now starving) and man (who has no fish stored for winter).
Story below: VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 24 — Rangers and villagers killed nine grizzly bears on Canada’s western coast, after large numbers of the animals began foraging in town when their traditional supply of salmon dried up, officials said Wednesday.
By CAMILLE BAINS -- Canadian Press VANCOUVER -- A mother grizzly bear and her two cubs were shot Wednesday, the latest to be killed as bears wander into an aboriginal village looking for food because a critical lack of salmon has left them starving. Tom Gottselig, who administers the fishery in Oweekeno -- also known as Rivers Inlet on British Columbia's central coast -- said a citizen shot the three bears Wednesday morning after the desperate grizzlies tried to claw their way into three homes. "The death toll now is nine bears," said Gottselig. Six others have been shot by conservation officers since the end of October . Environmentalists and one biologist have blamed overfishing by the commercial and sports fishery as well as bad logging practices for the salmon shortage . Herb Langin, an Environment Ministry spokesman in nearby Williams Lake, said the bears were killed because they were a threat to the community and were unsuitable for relocation . "It wasn't likely they were going to survive," Langin said . "They didn't have the fat reserves that a bear would normally have at that time of year." The lack of salmon is seriously affecting the bears and the aboriginal people who have historically depended on the fish for their livelihood, he said. "Ninety-five per cent of the people in the village will have no salmon for the winter," Gottselig said. "Generally they'll have their stocks of canned salmon or smoked salmon and that's the mainstay of their diet, but nobody has any food this year." Gottselig said only 3,500 sockeye are expected to spawn this year in Rivers Inlet, which annually boasts returns of more than three million sockeye. "The Oweekeno is an ancient tribe and this whole lake was just inundated with salmon, which has sustained these people forever," he said. "It's a tragedy all around because there won't be much left for them to stay here." Gottselig said the ecosystem "looks like it's in dire straits." Environmentalist Jim Fulton of the David Suzuki Foundation said several factors are to blame, including the 75-day sports fishery this summer. He said the Department of Fisheries should never have allowed the fishery. Fulton also said the province has allowed excessive logging in the area and that has affected the salmon habitat. Wayne Saito, a spokesman for the department, said the sports fishery would have had a negligible impact on the salmon return in Rivers Inlet. "The impact of the recreational area is that for every 100 fish that are there, the recreational fishery might remove one or two fish," Seto said. Although a 75-day run may sound like an extended period of time, very few people fish the area, he said . "It's very expensive to get there, it's very remote and very distant from any populated centres and there's a small number of fishing lodges although the area is world famous," he said. The steep decline in the number of salmon is mostly unexplained, Seto said. "There has been a very dramatic decline but it's not connected with fishing activity." Tom Reimchen, a University of Victoria biologist, said the lack of food is not only affecting bears and people, but the entire ecosystem. "Bears carry salmon into the forest and increase the diversity of organisms like birds and insects," he said. "There's thousands of kilograms of salmon carcasses there that insects feed on." Increased logging in the area has also put more sediment into the lakes, rivers and streams, making the waterways unsuitable for salmon spawning, Reimchen said.
VANCOUVER (November 25, 1999 1:01 a.m. EST A mother bear and two cubs were killed Wednesday in the most recent shootings and three other bears were airlifted out of the region. Residents of Oweekeno village on the central British Columbia coast say they have never seen so many bears in town, said Tom Gottselig, the fisheries administrator for the Oweekeno First Nation, an Indian group. He blamed the lack of salmon, which make up 70 percent of the bears' diet. The area, also known as Rivers Inlet, has recorded more than 3 million sockeye salmon returning to spawn in past years, Gottselig said. This year's figure was expected to be 3,500, he said. "It's an absolute catastrophe," he said. Conservationists blame a history of logging and over-fishing in the area for the depleted salmon numbers. Herb Langin, an Environment Ministry spokesman in nearby Williams Lake, said the bears were a threat to the community and unsuitable for relocation . "It wasn't likely they were going to survive," Langin said. "They didn't have the fat reserves that a bear would normally have at that time of year." Tom Reimchen, a biologist researching the relationship between bears, called on the federal government to take immediate steps to help the salmon stocks recover. He warned that the problem exists all along the British Columbia coast, threatening the ecology and local communities.
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