The recurring demand that grizzly bear be taken off the list of game animals, that is, that all hunting of grizzly bears be halted, is troubling. These good intentions, unfortunately, cannot lead to a greater security for bears. In fact, quite the contrary.

Remove grizzly bears from the list of huntable wildlife and the game departments are under no obligation whatsoever to census grizzly bears, or study such. Only if hunting quota are set, is there effort and money expended trying to determine population size, and thus a sustainable harvest. Game departments are accountable to the public in an ongoing fashion about grizzly bears, as long as quotas are set. When they are totally protected nobody will inquire into grizzly bears and their fate. While today's census methods are, admittedly, crude and require ongoing refinement, such will come to a halt with a prohibition on hunting.

As in national parks, where grizzly bears are nominally protected, grizzly bears will be killed off without publicity in an ongoing concern for the safety of tourists. Consequently, number 1 and 2 killing localities for grizzly bears in North America are Lake Louise and Banff. (Nielsen, S. E., S. Herrero, M. S. Boyce, R. D. Mace, B. Benn, M. L. Gibeau, and S. Jevons. 2004. Modeling the spatial distribution of human caused grizzly bear mortalities in the Central Rockies Ecosystem of Canada. Biological Conservation 120:101-113.). In the 1950's the policy was implemented to remove habituated black bears from the western parks. I was informed, confidentially, that some 256 black bears had been killed. National parks, unlike game departments are not accountable to the public! Now black bears are very rare in Banff and Jasper national parks, and sighting one is an event.

In short, removing grizzly bears from hunted wildlife is equivalent to blinding oneself about the fate of the bears. After all, they are protected, are they not?

Currently, guides and outfitters exert some protection for bears as they do benefit economically from such. With the public slumbering in the secure belief that grizzly bears are safe as not hunted, and no law enforcement personnel assigned to grizzly protection, the grizzly bear in the backcountry assumes the symbol of a vermin to prospectors, outfitters, and trappers. That is, troublesome bears will be shot and left. One professor of Geology even told me how to rig sticks of dynamite to blow off the heads of troublesome grizzly bears. "I hate them" he concluded. I have been around long enough to know that he is not alone!

Then there is the matter of hikers. When I began my career as a biologist in 1959 in Wells Gray Provincial Park, BC, the park was loaded with bears and other wildlife. The bears were the best behaved I have ever encountered. Although there was an open season, nobody hunted them. The one grizzly bear I know of who was killed was taken on behest of the Provincial Museum in Victoria (above the junction of Clearwater and Azure lakes). It was totally safe to camp outside anywhere, and I camped in the backcountry for months on end and the few grizzly bears that I met took off, including a mother with two tiny cubs, which I met at 7 paces distance. In Banff I would not have survived such a meeting! The difference? For all practical purposes - no hikers. The human visitors were normally all armed - hunters, outfitters, trappers, and biologists. Armed humans exude confidence and are not particularly afraid of bears - and these sense that very quickly. Unarmed hikers do not have that confidence. They signal their insecurity and bears pick up on that very quickly. Ergo, they may assert themselves, become problem bears and are destroyed without publicity. Inefficient hunting with many hunters moving about conditions bears negatively - and they live. Bears, especially black bears, are extremely intelligent, very observant creatures that act with ruthless logic on their experiences. I shall spare you some of the technical details here from the technical study of animal behavior. But there is more to the story, and I shall gladly answer questions.

The following was taken from draft of a paper on wildlife habituation I presented at a symposium entitled "Wildlife Habituation: Advances in Understanding and Management Application", by The Wildlife Society in Madison, Wisconsin on Sept. 27th 2005. Due to personal circumstances I was not able to finish this paper for publication, but will do so in the near future.

"How to Eliminate Bears from National Parks with Photography. It is the conventional wisdom that bears are attracted to human food and, consequently, to be safe, one must distance oneself from potential bear food. Also, making bears aware of one's presence, avoiding surprise meetings is the safe way to go. While these conventional wisdoms are valid, they are by themselves insufficient to understand bear behavior. They imply that as long as one views or even photographs a bear that ignores humans, all is well.

Not so!

This generates a false sense of security, which translates into innocent brazenness about bears and which, ironically, protects the visitor - temporarily - from attacks. The problem with the conventional wisdoms is that they lead people innocently into habituating bears, which in turn leads to bears initiating explorations of humans and their habitations. That in turn brands them as "problem bears" which national parks must remove to insure visitor safety. Consequently, Lake Louise and Banff are the primary grizzly killing spots of the continent (Nielsen et al. 2004); black bears are also rare in the parks. As matters now stand national parks can turn, inadvertently, into "black holes" for bears.

Consider the following scenario: a young wilderness bear walking into a national park is subjected to photography by laymen and professionals. We expect the bear, initially, to flee all advances by people. Then, driven by hunger and feeding in a nice patch of young and digestible horsetails, or in an alpine meadow, or on an avalanche slope, it initially resists running from encroaching humans, but runs off in the end. As more contacts follow it begins to tolerate humans. It starts to grow "tame" becoming a magnet for photographers and film-crews, let alone tourists with camera and camcorder!

Our bear is now habituated, but still avoids brazen approaches, as in bear society only the dominants are brazen. The habituated bear is in a state of unconsummated interest in humans and one day it will consummate that interest - at its choosing! Every habituated animal will go through that exploration stage, unless negatively conditioned. Such a habituated bear can be expected to begin de-habituation by exploring campgrounds, parking lots, road kills - and defend the latter. It is now branded a "nuisance bear", and even if it has not yet "explored" a human physically, its fate is sealed.

The cause of its demise: ceaseless attention by curious tourists and photographers bent on getting pictures. And these are the well-behaved visitors. Then there are those who tease wildlife, who throw rocks, charge, slap or kick tame bears, let alone aggressive drunks trying to feed escaping bears potato chips and coke!

In circumstances when the bear is well fed, such as during salmon runs, it may stay merely habituated a long time, and tolerate brazen humans and their provocations. Now, carnivores consummate habituation like any other animal by testing if this strange being is edible. And that always means an attack!

Testing carnivores attack suddenly, unpredictably! Sometimes they stop short and threaten. Bears swat the ground with their paws. Sometimes a lucky bear gets a - lifesaving - dosage of pepper-spray into its face and runs off, never to try testing again. Sometimes they are truly frightened by an aggressive human and sense that it's best to run. That might stop them from trying to consummate curiosity for some time. Unfortunately, bears do have cyclical metabolic demands and bears change behavior with such demands. A bear in April is not the same as in September. Fattening is then upon them, and so is hyperphagia! Bears need to fatten up for hibernation. And then they become super-hungry, and earlier constraints weaken - if there is not enough food about. A well-fed bears is usually not dangerous. A hungry one is! Late August, September, October are the months of very hungry bears! And blessed the land that is full of spawning salmon, rich crops of berries, well-fattened caribou or moose or dead whales on the beaches or whatever!

And woe to bears when commercial fishing reduces salmon runs to a trickle, for desperately hungry bears will seek out human habitation, act dangerously and be killed. We have had such in British Columbia. Canadian federal salmon quotas do not include an allocation for bears! One can be lured into false security when being close to habituated bears that are on full feed and show great tolerance towards humans, because the same bear under condition of seasonal hypephagia may respond with a predatory attack. And habituation is the essential prelude to such! It is fortunate that bears appear to have a very high threshold to approaching humans and prefer to stay their distance - unless we disrupt such with constant approaches to satisfy curiosity or photograph the bear.

Theoretically, the difficulties arising from people following bears in order to photograph them can be reduced by limiting photography of bears to fixed observation sites, such as viewing platforms or roads. Under such circumstances bears are un-addressed and un-encroached and are thus free to habituate slowly. Nevertheless, under such circumstances one still expects bears to seek out humans and their abodes, but mainly if induced to do so by the smell of food. Still, any persistent contact between humans and bears will in the long run lead to bears "exploring humans". Negative conditioning of bears is thus essential, the earlier the better."

The French version of this article can be found by clicking here.