"What we do know about the…

ERO number

019-1112

Comment ID

43602

Commenting on behalf of

Individual

Comment status

Comment approved More about comment statuses

Comment

"What we do know about the spring bear hunt is:
- Most hunters are non-residents who hunt by baiting bears;
- Many hunters at bait stations are unable to distinguish between male and female bears;
- Female bears are killed, including nursing mothers;
- Orphaned cubs – about five to six months old and typically weighing about five kilograms – starve to death or are killed by other predators;
- Despite the threat of large fines, regulations prohibiting the killing of females accompanied by cubs are unenforceable."

Source: Nature Conservancy of Canada

"More males (72%) than females (20%) were killed outside the study area. The major effects of hunting were to reduce population size and lower the mean age of captured males. The prolonged period of maturation for black bears in Ontario, and the increased vulnerability of adult females, with increased hunting pressure emphasized the need for conservative provincial harvest quotas."

Source: The Effects of Hunting on an Ontario Black Bear Population
Author(s): George B. Kolenosky, KY, Wildlife Research Section, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, P.O. Box 50, Maple, Ontario
Source: Bears: Their Biology and Management, Vol. 6, A Selection of Papers from the Sixth
International Conference on Bear Research and Management, Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA,
February 1983 (1986), pp. 45-55

"In every case, communities understandably took tentative steps in the begin- ning of their policy formulation process concerning nuisance bears. These tentative steps were evaluated and in most cases were judged unsatisfactory, which eventually lead to accepting the need for bear-proof garbage containers requiring added expense and change in human behavior. In most cases the policy formulation process was lengthy, from 10–25 years. In all cases, the policy initially in- cluded attempts to apply averse-conditioning to discourage nuisance behavior by the bears. Only in Mammoth Lakes has the practice been consistently sustained over the long-term.
In all cases, a combination of constituency forces increased public aware- ness of the problem, leading to the collective conclusion that there was a critical level of conflict, a human responsibility for the conflict, and a need for collective action to solve the problem. This awareness lead to policy formulation that was refined until a satisfactory resolution of the problem was achieved. This process
reflects a classic normative activation model in which it is acknowledged that people will not change behavior unless they recognize the consequences of their collective action on valued resources in a specific situation (Schwartz, 1977; Zinn, Manfredo, Vaske, & Wittman, 1998)"

Source: Peine, J. D. (2001). Nuisance Bears in Communities: Strategies to Reduce Conflict. Human Dimensions of Wildlife, 6(3), 223–237. doi:10.1080/108712001753461301

There is no cap how many bear licences are sold in a year. This is an unacceptable bear management strategy to begin with. An additional spring bear hunt has an unknown outcome.