As a person passionate about our grizzly bears. I could not leave the letter "Grizzly hunt can be managed successfully" unanswered.
There was one "alternative fact" that drives me to distraction every time I read or hear it because it is just a cheap ploy to vilify male bears by the pro-bear hunting groups to win favour from the public and politicians. The writer of the letter states: "they (large mature bears) are notorious for eating cubs in order to breed that female again. Taking large bears can in fact potentially increase overall bear numbers."
This "cub saviour" or "cub avenger" story has forever been used by proponents of the bear hunt to further their one end: to continue to kill bears. It is a sad and desperate attempt to skew what happens in nature to win support for the abhorrent killing of highly evolved, sentient beings.
Yes, dominant male bears do kill cubs but why and should their natural behaviour be interfered with are really the questions that should be answered.
It has also been long understood by biologists that killing a dominant, older male bear will elevate juvenile male bears within the population. These younger males may cause havoc and potentially kill more cubs than an older dominant male bear ever would have. The cub avenger argument is a relic from the days around the campfire when hunters portrayed bears as ferocious, unpredictable, man-eating beasts to justify their lust for senseless predator killing and make themselves look like heroes.
No one can know for sure what is going through the mind of a bear when they kill a cub but it may be as simple as they are hungry. Who the heck are we to twist nature's laws to justify an unjustifiable and ego-driven sport?
Scientists are continually warning us that we live in a time when the Earth is losing species 1,000 times faster than the natural rate of extinction. There is no justification in 2017 to intentionally kill our grizzly bears.
We need to help them, and ourselves, by protecting what wild habitat is left and fight climate change as if our lives depend on it.
Barbara Murray
Nanoose Bay
