The 2020 Spring Bear Hunt in…

The 2020 Spring Bear Hunt in Ontario – an issue of concern.

The Ontario Annual Spring Bear hunt should be shut down permanently to eliminate the unnecessary killing of wild bears and the resulting cruel death by starvation of their orphaned bear cubs. The so called “hunt” uses baiting of bears with food dumps and the “hunters” merely use the wild bears for target practice. There is no hunting skill involved, no “shared family experiences” only a painful and pointless death for every single bear killed and cub that is orphaned and starves to death. How ruthless can anyone be to find pleasure in gunning down a bear out from its hibernation looking for food! A morally reprehensible act inconsistent with our civility!

The logic used by the bear killing industry that this is required to manage bear populations to reduce human bear interactions is greatly overstated. These rare interactions only occur in the marginal areas of development where the bear habitats are removed, and bears are attracted into the food waste in domestic bins and landfill areas. The hunters never want to kill these bears on the domestic fringe; only those out in their romantic fantasy of the wild. A responsible modern approach would be to control the urban spread and development with effective food waste management Education of people about their responsibility in management of and garden crops would be conducive to less attraction of bears to human habitats.

Hunting damages tourism and every dead bear makes Ontario appear more cruel in the eyes of the world. Most people want to experience the joy of seeing these magnificent creatures in the wild and to have the opportunity to share a brief interaction and take home only photos, not body parts. Too often we see a celebrity posting a picture of themselves against a dead animal on social media or on TV and each post is followed by thousands of comments by people disgusted with this display. The attitudes of the Conservation Officers noticed in other provinces has been found to be disturbing without any compassion for orphaned cubs and acted more like Law enforcement officers rather than for wild life protection.

We are living on a fragile planet with limited resources. Hunting belonged the days before agriculture when the need for food was a matter of survival of the hunter and the hunted. Today’s well fed hunters with their high-powered rifle and hiding near food piles is a travesty of the term hunting. This is an assault on humanity!
Wild life are vulnerable to the stress and struggles caused by our climate changes which is impacting on their food sources plus loss of habitats all likely to affect their reproduction abilities which is out of their natural abilities! What happens then to the population of these bears?

Civilisation has moved a long way on from trading cruelty for entertainment. The Ontario Annual Spring Bear hunt and all related bear hunting should be shut down permanently. Better we share our world with all our companions than kill the bears and their cubs which do nothing for the general population who looses out on enjoying these magnificent mammals. Using dogs/hounds to harass bears is an act of abhorrence as pitting animals against animals is an act of depraved human behaviour and must be condemned in our societies.

Tourism will be affected as from my own experience have been totally disappointed from not seeing any wild life or bears when visiting this province! The Economic contribution from tourism viewing far outweighs that from Hunter’s licence fees.

A pressing and disturbing concern is the growing markets for “bear parts” to meet the demands of the Asian Markets also contributing to the shocking “bear bile” operations in which Canadian Black bears have fallen victims to as per various articles in the media. The recent disturbing cases in Saskatchewan and Richmond in British Columbia should be of concern to Ontario as it indicates the likely dangers associated with legal hunting of black bears.

We have seen the disastrous consequences in many countries where legal hunting has become uncontrollable to manage as it quickly opened the doors to poaching. This immoral outcome would be a tragedy for Canadian Wildlife if hunting of black bears became permanent and legal in Ontario, as it would likely have a nationwide effect.

Thank you for this opportunity and hoping for an end to killing the black bears forever. We are all inhabitants of this planet with our own purpose. We enjoy wild life today and want the future generations to be able to do the the same .