Watching grizzly bears catch and eat salmon as they swim upstream to spawn is an unforgettable experience. Many people love to view the wild drama. Some record it with photos or video. But a few want to kill the iconic animals — not to eat, just to put their heads on a wall or coats on a floor.

Foreign hunters bag BC bears

The spring grizzly kill starts April 1 and extends for several weeks, followed by a second fall season. By year’s end, several hundred will have died at the hands of humans, close to 90 per cent shot by trophy hunters — many of them foreign licence-holders, as the B.C. government plans to enact new regulations to allow hunters from outside B.C. to take 40 per cent of grizzlies slated for killing. The government also plans to allow foreign interests and corporations to buy and run guide-outfitting territories previously run only by B.C. residents. Local hunting organizations say the new rules put them at a disadvantage.

Government takes money from hunting lobby

According to the Vancouver Observer, hunting guide associations donated $84,800 to B.C. political parties from 2005 to 2013, 84 per cent to the B.C. Liberals.

In the controversy over regulatory changes, we’ve lost touch with the fact that the grizzly trophy hunt is horrific, regardless of whether bears are killed by resident hunters or big-game hunters who pay thousands of dollars for the chance to kill a bear here — often because it’s illegal in their home countries.

BC’s population in doubt

Grizzlies once roamed much of North America, from Mexico to the Yukon and from the West Coast through the prairies. Habitat loss and overhunting have since shrunk their range by more than half. In Canada, 16 subgroups are on the brink of extinction, including nine in south-central B.C. and Alberta’s entire grizzly population.

Just how many bears reside in B.C. is in dispute. The government claims more than 15,000 grizzlies live here, but Raincoast Conservation Foundation science director Chris Darimont, a University of Victoria conservation biologist, puts the number closer to the government’s earlier estimate of 6,600 — before it doubled that in 1990 based on a single study in southeastern B.C.’s Flathead area.

Government scientist’s work suppressed

According to a Maclean’s article, in 2000, the government “suppressed the work of one of its own biologists, Dionys de Leeuw, for suggesting the hunt was excessive and could be pushing the bears to extinction. De Leeuw was later suspended without pay for having pursued the line of inquiry.” The government then pursued a five-year legal battle with groups including Raincoast Conservation and Ecojustice to keep its grizzly kill data sealed.

Allan Thornton, president of the British Environmental Investigation Agency, which has studied B.C. grizzly management since the late 1990s, is blunt about the government’s justification. “The British Columbia wildlife department does not use rigorous science,” he told the Vancouver Observer. In 2004, the European Union banned imports of all B.C. grizzly parts into member countries after its analysis found the hunt to be unsustainable.

Business case questioned

Even the economic case is shaky. Studies by the Centre for Responsible Travel and Raincoast Conservation conclude revenue from bear-viewing is far higher than revenue from grizzly hunting.

Grizzlies play important ecological role

Grizzly population health is an indicator of overall ecosystem health, and bears are important to functioning ecosystems. They help regulate prey such as deer and elk, maintain forest health by dispersing seeds and aerating soil as they dig for food, and fertilize coastal forests by dragging salmon carcasses into the woods. Hunting isn’t the only threat. Habitat loss, decreasing salmon runs, collisions with vehicles and other conflicts with humans also endanger grizzlies. Because they have low reproduction rates, they’re highly susceptible to population decline. Hunting is one threat we can easily control.

First Nations, citizens oppose hunt

According to polls, almost 90 per cent of B.C. residents oppose hunting grizzlies for trophies, including many Frist Nations and food hunters. Scientists say it’s unsustainable. The Coastal First Nations coalition has banned grizzly hunting in its territories, but the government doesn’t recognize the ban. The Raincoast Conservation Foundation has bought hunting licences in an attempt to reduce bear kills on the coast.

Simply put, most British Columbians — and Canadians — are against the grizzly trophy hunt. It’s time for the government to listen to the majority rather than industry donors and ban this barbaric and unsustainable practice.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.

No matter how you feel about Ontario’s proposal to restrict use of neonicotinoid insecticides on corn and soybean crops, we can all agree: bees matter. But as important as bees are, there’s more at stake. Neonics are poisoning our soil and water. This problematic class of pesticides needs to be phased out globally to protect Earth’s ecosystems. By implementing restrictions now (the first in North America), Ontario will have a head start in the transition to safer alternatives.

Pesticide industry stung by proposed regulations

Not surprisingly, Ontario’s proposal has drawn the ire of the pesticide industry.

Neonics have only been around for a couple of decades, but annual global sales now top $2.6 billion. They were initially embraced because they are less directly toxic to humans than older pesticides and are effective at low levels, reducing the volume used. They can be applied to seeds and are absorbed into the plant, which then becomes toxic to insect pests, reducing the need to spray.

We now know these characteristics are the problem. These chemicals are nerve poisons that are toxic even at very low doses and persist in plants and the environment. They affect the information-processing abilities of invertebrates, including some of our most important pollinators.

Bee die-offs related to neonics: federal agency

Bees have borne the brunt of our unfortunate, uncontrolled experiment with neonics. Beekeepers report unusually high bee death rates in recent years, particularly in corn-growing areas of Ontario and Quebec. Virtually all corn and about 60 per cent of soybean seeds planted in Ontario are treated with neonics. A federal Pest Management Regulatory Agency investigation concluded that planting neonic-treated seeds contributed to the bee die-offs.

Europe reached a similar conclusion and placed a moratorium on the use of neonics on bee-attractive crops, which took effect last year.

Critics emphasize that other factors — including climate change, habitat loss and disease — affect pollinator health. But these factors are not entirely independent; for example, chronic exposure to neonics may increase vulnerability to disease. A comprehensive pollinator health action plan should address all these factors, and scaling back the use of neonics is a good place to start.

Neonics threaten other species

Apart from the immediate and lethal effects on bees, neonics represent a more subtle threat to a wide range of species. The 2014 Worldwide Integrated Assessment of the Impacts of Systemic Pesticides, the most comprehensive review of the scientific literature on neonics, pointed to effects on smell and memory, reproduction, feeding behaviour, flight and ability to fight disease. Jean‐Marc Bonmatin, one of the lead authors, summarized the conclusions:

[quote]The evidence is very clear. We are witnessing a threat to the productivity of our natural and farmed environment equivalent to that posed by organophosphates or DDT. Far from protecting food production the use of neonics is threatening the very infrastructure which enables it, imperilling the pollinators, habitat engineers and natural pest controllers at the heart of a functioning ecosystem.[/quote]

Precautionary Principle should apply

Is there some uncertainty involved in calculating these risks? Absolutely. Uncertainty is at the heart of scientific inquiry. The precautionary principle requires that where there is threat of serious or irreversible harm to human health or the environment, the absence of complete scientific certainty or consensus must not be used as an excuse to delay action. In the case of neonics, the weight of evidence clearly supports precautionary action to reduce — or even eliminate — them.

Ontario proposal is common sense

Ontario’s proposal to restrict the use of neonic-treated corn and soybean seed, starting next year, is far from radical. The idea is to move away from routinely planting neonic-treated seeds and use neonics only in situations where crops are highly vulnerable to targeted pests. The government expects this will reduce the uses of neonic-treated corn and soybean seed by 80 per cent by 2017.

It’s no surprise that the pesticide industry and its associates oppose even this modest proposal and are running expensive PR campaigns to obscure the evidence of harm. The industry’s objection to restrictions on neonics is eerily similar to big-budget advertising campaigns to create a smokescreen thick enough to delay regulatory responses to the obvious harm caused by cigarettes.

Let’s hope today’s decision-makers have a better grasp of the precautionary principle and a stronger commitment to protecting the public good, because bees really do matter.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Ontario and Northern Canada Director-General Faisal Moola.

By Sue Bailey, The Canadian Press

PARADISE, N.L. – Newfoundland’s healthy honeybees are an increasing draw for researchers in the race to understand why colonies across much of the globe are struggling or dying off.

“There is definitely interest in what’s happening here,” said Dave Jennings, a director with the provincial Natural Resources department.

[quote]There are fewer and fewer places as we look around the world now that can claim to be free from the major bee pests. And we’re one of the few.[/quote]

Pesticides, parasites, climate change all suspected in collapse

Honeybees are crucial pollinators for fruit, vegetables and other crops. But stressors blamed for decimating hives around the world include invasive parasites such as the Varroa destructor mite, climate change and the use of pesticides.

The Canadian Honey Council has estimated that the bee population across the country has dropped by about 35 per cent in the past three years.

The island of Newfoundland, however, is gaining attention as an increasingly rare haven.

Newfoundland bucking the trend

Jennings said there are now about 38 beekeepers with hundreds of colonies. There has been growing interest in Labrador but long winters with extreme cold pose a major challenge, he explained.

It’s a tiny sector compared to other places in Canada but Newfoundland produces a growing array of beeswax products. The honey is a particularly pure wildflower variety that sells out quickly to local consumers, Jennings said.

There are no recorded cases of predominant bee parasites such as Varroa destructor or Nosema ceranae that have plagued honeybees elsewhere. And the absence of massive corn and soybean farms on the rocky island with its comparatively short growing season means neonic pesticides are hardly used, Jennings said.

Growing calls for pesticide ban

An international panel of 50 scientists last month called for tighter regulations and an ultimate phase-out of such products. The group calling itself the Task Force on Systemic Pesticides compared so-called neonics or neonicotinoids, a type of insecticide that’s chemically reminiscent of nicotine, to the use of DDT in the 1960s.

It said a study of 800 research papers offers conclusive evidence that neonics sprayed as a preventive pesticide over crops or to coat seeds are killing bees and other insects on a massive scale.

Province maintains strict import controls

As for mites, Newfoundland’s sheer distance from infected mainland bees means they would most likely only be introduced if imported.

“You basically can’t import honeybees in this province without getting a permit,” Jennings said. “We very much restrict that because we want to keep the pests out.”

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The province relies on the co-operation of beekeepers and is also assessing its control of bumblebee imports used to pollinate cranberry and blueberry crops, he added.

“It’s something we’re keeping our eye on.”

Recent studies highlight how different species can pass on parasites, said Geoff Williams, a senior research associate at the Institute of Bee Health at the University of Bern in Switzerland.

“Certainly with any type of import, whether or not it’s a honeybee or a bumblebee, there’s the threat of this transmission of pathogens.”

Newfoundland can gauge impact of harmful mite

Williams said Newfoundland can help researchers gauge the toll of the rampant Verroa destructor mite and other parasites elsewhere.

“There’s really only a handful of locations across the globe that don’t have this mite,” he said. “It gives you great baseline data of what honeybee populations were like … before Verroa.”

Williams visited Newfoundland in 2010, collecting samples from hives around Corner Brook and St. John’s for research that was part of an article last month in PLOS ONE, an international, peer-reviewed online scientific journal. He laughed when asked about reports that even the bees in Newfoundland are friendly.

“It depends on the day,” he said. “Certainly when I was over there I didn’t have any issues with really aggressive bees.”

Beekeeper Aubrey Goulding and his wife, Viola, run Paradise Farms Inc., selling beeswax candles, skin balms and honey in Paradise, N.L., outside St. John’s.

His bees are among the healthiest on the planet, he said. But he dreads that mites will somehow be brought to the island. He called for ongoing vigilance when it comes to bee imports and said residents can also help.

“Honeybees do visit people’s lawns, clover and even dandelions. So if you can refrain from using pesticides, that’d be a great plus for the bees.”

When Farley Mowat died on May 6, 2014, at age 92, his incessant flow of writing stopped, words about him shifted from the present to the past tense, and an examination of his life and influence began. But some conclusions were immediately obvious. There was only one Farley — mention Farley anywhere across Canada and it had to mean Farley Mowat.

He was also one of the world’s first eco-warriors. And, as a writer, he will probably have the last word because of the enduring character of print — 17 million copies of 44 books translated into dozens of languages will ensure that the echo of his presence will influence many others well into the future.

The young nature lover

For a man who seemed so overt and uninhibited, the deeper Farley was, in many ways, a private person. But we get clear glimpses of his thoughts, feelings and commitments. At 13 he was already writing about nature, had started a magazine called Nature Lore, and as a young teen was publishing a nature column in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix — he used the $5.00 per column to buy feed for starving geese and ducks.

Nature and writing were the two passions of his life. The other formidable experience in his life was war. Like his father who had been indelibly scarred by the First World War, Farley’s perspective of humanity was forged by the five years he spent as a Canadian soldier fighting his way northward through Italy during the Second World War. “I came back from the war rejecting my species,” he said. “I hated what had been done to me and what I had done and what man did to man.”

On crying wolf

After the war and a university education, he immersed himself in the Canadian North where he wrote about the wilderness, wild species and aboriginal people uncontaminated by civilization. This long therapeutic session focused and clarified his attitude about humanity. “We are a bad animal,” he confided, “— a really bad animal.” In Never Cry Wolf he wrote, “We have doomed the wolf not for what it is, but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be — the mythological epitome of a savage, ruthless killer — which is, in reality, no more than the reflected image of ourself.”

He has described us as “an evolutionary mistake” and “a dangerous abomination.” So, for the rest of his life, he said, “I transferred my allegiance to the other — the 99.9 percent of life that is not us.” And the more he learned of nature, the less he thought of humanity. He frequently warned that we must learn to live in harmony with the natural world or we perish. “It’s a matter of survival,” he declared.

[quote]Either we learn to do this, or we cease to exist. We have no God-given right to survive forever. We have screwed up so badly in so many ways so obviously that only an utterly stupid species would consider that we have much of a future, as things stand. Only by recognizing how far off-track we’ve gone, are we likely to be able to recover our footing and carry on.[/quote]

Creating a ‘persona’

For his own survival as a wild, shy and private animal illuminated in the headlights of fame, Farley invented a persona. In his later years, he candidly described a conversation he had with his publisher, Jack McClelland: “I think we were having one of our liquid lunches, and we reeled back toward the office. Jack said, ‘You have to present an image.’ So I listened and I worked out my image: a kilt-wearing, swaggering, mooning, drinking Farley Mowat. It was always a cardboard cutout, and it was very useful. I could carry it in front of me, and be my own self behind it. I don’t need it any more.”

The elder Farley

Age has a way of dissolving the persona of cardboard cutouts. And the authentic Farley became clearer as he aged. At 92, with millions of books sold and a solid reputation as an prescient environmentalist, he had no legitimate rationale for maintaining an artificial image. His energy, vitality, irreverence, mischeviousness and incisive opinions were even more sharply expressed with the passing of years.

As Shelagh Rogers of CBC radio confided when interviewing Farley, “I never knew what I was in for.” These encounters with the media in his later life are full of deep insights as he continually contrasted nature’s wisdom with humanity’s folly. “Our tragedy is our loss of animality.” In his judgment, “We’re under some gross misconception that we’re a good species, going somewhere important, and that at the last minute we’ll correct our errors and God will smile on us. It’s delusion.”

Animal nature

Facts, too, were delusions for Farley. “Most people are wedded to the idea that facts are truth. Don’t trust people who say they have the facts.” From Farley’s perspective, facts are the instruments used to exploit nature and manoeuvre ourselves farther from the very foundation of our being. “Nature,” he pronounced, “is life.” The only credible fact is nature’s wisdom; everything else is our deviousness.

So, ever true to his animal nature, he declared that, “I am what I feel I am. Knowledge comes to me through feeling.” His feeling for the future was not so much bleak as biological. He pronounced us “an evanescent species”. In the unfolding of nature, “Our own species will disappear,” he concluded. “Every species is born to die. Nothing ends. It’s all one continuous flow.”

“I haven’t saved the wolf”

As for his 92 years in this “continuous flow” — 79 years as an eco-warrior — he deemed his life’s work to be ineffective. “I could honestly say I’ve fought the good fight,” he concluded shortly before his death.

[quote]But in the end, my crusades have accomplished nothing. I haven’t saved the wolf, the whales, the seals, primitive man or the outport people. All I’ve done is to document the suicidal tendencies of modern man. I’m sure I haven’t altered the course of human events one iota.[/quote]

But he has, of course. The world would be a less conscious place had Farley not been here. Granted, he couldn’t alter human nature — history is the process of defining what that might be — but he was, if nothing else, a hopeful part of it.

From the age of five, Fred Urquhart was fascinated by monarch butterflies in his Toronto neighbourhood. Born in 1911, he spent hours watching the orange and black insects flutter about, wondering: Where did they go in winter? At school, he read voraciously about nature, especially monarchs and other insects.

He eventually became a zoology professor and married Norah Patterson, who shared his love of butterflies, as did their son, Doug. To answer the question that had nagged Fred since childhood, in 1940 they found a way to attach tiny labels to individual butterflies that read, “Send to Zoology University of Toronto Canada.” They started the Insect Migration Association, now known as Monarch Watch, enlisting “citizen scientists” to tag butterflies.

Solving the monarch mystery

They finally solved the mystery in 1975 – with the help of two citizen scientists in Mexico. Ken Brugger and Catalina Aguado had come across millions of butterflies in the mountains west of Mexico City. The couple took the Urquharts there in 1976 and, miraculously, Fred found one of his tagged insects within hours. Their fascinating story is told in the documentary film Flight of the Butterflies and in an episode of CBC’s The Nature of Things, “The Great Butterfly Hunt”.

Now, monarchs are in trouble, their numbers drastically reduced from the days when the Urquharts pursued their passion. And once again, experts and others are calling on citizen scientists – and politicians – to help.

Letter from a Mexican poet

Monarch populations in Mexico plummeted to a record low of about 33.5 million this year from an annual average over the past 15 years of about 350 million and highs of more than one billion. Causes include illegal logging in Mexico, herbicide use on genetically modified crops in the U.S. and climate change.

In February, in response to a letter by Mexican poet Homero Aridjis, signed by more than 100 scientists, writers and environmentalists – including Canadians Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje and John Ralston Saul – U.S. President Barack Obama, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper agreed to “establish a working group to ensure the conservation of the monarch butterfly, a species that symbolizes our association.”

The letter to leaders said:

[quote]As Mexico is addressing the logging issues, so now must the United States and Canada address the effects of our current agricultural policies.[/quote]

GMO’s and butterflies

Those problematic practices are mainly associated with large-scale planting of corn and soy genetically modified to resist the herbicide Roundup, or glyphosate. It doesn’t kill crops – just pretty much everything else, including the milkweed monarchs need to lay their eggs and that is their caterpillars’ main food.

How citizen scientists can help

We can only hope our leaders live up to their commitment, and we can speak up to hold them to it. But we can also become citizen scientists to help researchers better understand the butterfly’s breeding, migrating and overwintering cycles and help monarchs survive. Monarch Watch offers classroom resources, student-scientist research projects and information about building monarch way stations, raising your own monarchs and planting milkweed and butterfly gardens. The U.S. Monarch Joint Venture website offers resources for citizens to track migration, count butterflies and monitor larval populations and disease for monarchs – as well as other butterflies.

The David Suzuki Foundation website also offers a range of resources and activities to help protect these pollinating insects. And, as part of its Homegrown National Park Project, the foundation is launching a Toronto-based campaign in April to crowd-source a milkweed corridor through the city.

Getting kids involved

Helping monarch and other butterflies and insects is a fun way to get kids interested in nature’s wonders. Planting milkweed and nectar-producing native flowers on balconies and in gardens, parks and green spaces will beautify the area around your home and bring bees and butterflies to the neighbourhood.

Scientists still don’t know everything about monarchs and their migration, but we know they play an important role in ecosystems. And we know everything in nature is interconnected. When something that travels such long distances through a range of habitats is removed, it can have cascading effects on those environments.

The world wouldn’t know where North American monarchs travel if it weren’t for the Urquharts and the continent-wide battalion of citizen scientists they inspired. We can all help ensure monarch butterflies continue this wonderful journey every year.

With contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.