My wife and I went to Tofino (on Vancouver) this last summer where you can rent a boat for a tour of the coastal black bears. Very highly recommend it.
(As a local) it sounds weird to say "on Vancouver" without the island part. Vancouver means the city. If you want to sound cool you can say "the Island".
Super cool! I love Vancouver island - normally visit Campbell River where I used to have family. Always wanted to make it to the west side for Tofino or the West Coast Trail.
I hope you made a stop in Hot Springs Cove.
That place is magical.
Might make for an interesting development on future seasons of Alone if Grizzles become a common presence on Vancouver Island.
My understanding of read materials so far is the amount of work gone into the program to risk profile danger was incredible, the change in risk profile of the addition of Grizzles on top of wolves and black bears would be quite an adjustment.
They have done at least one season in Interior BC where Grizzlies are present. They have also done seasons in northern Canada where within range of those predators as well.
My Yukon buddy was the safety officer/local guy when they did alone up on great slave lake in the NWT.( near Yellowknife)
He hung around all the time with his hunting rifle and a 12 gauge loaded with slugs to make sure nobody got eaten.
He got in trouble for sharing smokes and giving fire to the contestants a few times.
Note that Vancouver Island has absurd numbers of black bear but pretty much or at zero brown bears until now.
I'm wondering if they're u. a. stikeenensis, gyas, dalli, or merely the terribly-named horribilis.
How would they avoid inbreeding and genetic mutations if only a single bloodline existed there?
I think the grizzlies will take care of that on their own. Either some bears from the island will swim to the mainland, or vice versa.
Note: don't ask for a link on that. I just suspect animals prefer not to mate with their siblings.
They will need to watch very carefully for any negative relationship with the endemic Vancouver Island Marmot, that only lives in a couple spots in the Island. In this case, those bears will need to be captured and moved out of the Island again. Grizzlies have the rest of N America to live.
The marmots are in so few locations and in such small numbers, it seems exceedingly unlikely that it would become an issue. It would be awful if it was a problem though. The marmots have been having record years, and their recovery is really just beginning.
1) Grizzlies are known to ear marmots if they can catch them. Those bears are able to move big stones. One bear that would specialize on open the tunnels and chase the rodents on their nests, could trigger the demise of the wild population in months or weeks. Even before we could notice it.
2) Bears will compete for the same fruits and resources in autumn and have big appetites. Marmots need those fruits to survive winter.
3) Vancouver Marmot societies can collapse suddenly if the number is reduced, because they need a minimum number of watchers for protection while the other eat.
The risk simply doesn't worth it at this moment. Professional advice should be relocation of the bears until the marmot situation improves and creates a minimum number of individuals that would act as a safety buffer. Those bears at least should be radiotracked ASAP and followed by Biologists and specialized workers. That would be the minimum action required. If they enter on the area with marmots they must go. Prioritizing safety of the critically endangered animals over the common species is the correct decision.
I agree they should be tracked, absolutely. I should have specified that I wouldn’t expect it to be an issue in the short term. Eventually they would almost certainly interact, though at that point hopefully the marmots will be established with stable populations.
I also agree that prioritizing endangered species is the right decision here. We have more than enough bears on the island. We don’t really need to ensure grizzlies stay in the mix at the moment, haha.
I've been up REAL close to grizzlies, on Kodiak Island [1]. However, that has a population of 13,000 [2], whereas Vancouver has 840,000, according to that article.
That means on Kodiak, the bears have the land mostly to themselves, and humans aren't much of a threat to them. You wouldn't try this in Yellowstone, where fatal bear-human encounters happen regularly. And probably will on Vancouver, too.
[1] https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/travel-disasters
[2] https://usafacts.org/data/topics/people-society/population-a...
It’s important to distinguish “Vancouver” (a city on the mainland) and “Vancouver Island” (an island off the coast).
Vancouver Island has a population nearing a million, but half of it live in the greater Victoria area, which occupies a tiny little peninsula and change on the southern tip. Most of the island - which is huge, approximately four times the size of Kodiak Island, for what it’s worth - is pretty wild and untamed.
I'm sure, but the question is, do the populations intersect? Looking at the map, I see three Provincial Parks up in the north, plus towns and roads. That will mean vacationers will encounter them.
Whereas on Kodiak, there is nothing on one side of the island.
I think it's time that we start to make room once again for the animals we almost drove to extinction. This would be a good, controlled setting to see if we can do this responsibly.
For good reason. Brown bears eat people. You are no more than a slow meal to them. Coexistence means accepting that people will be eaten by bears or bears will be killed by people defending themselves. I think it is worth noting that native tribes prepared for war if the needed to kill a brown bear.
How is Vancouver "controlled"? The grizzlies can obviously swim back to the mainland if they don't like it.
> we almost drove to extinction
In the Lower 48, yes. Not in Canada and Alaska.