In Today’s Globe and Mail Mark Hume reports a story that without a shred of doubt will get picked up widely. He has no sources among wildlife biologists who can back it up, but nature guides and other watchful frequenters of the shores of British Columbia report almost no bears are to be seen, neither grizzlies nor black bears. Not even during times that salmon are usually running and the bears throng the rivers and streams. With almost none of the salmon species that bears depend on making their runs recently, his sources tell him they fear the bears have died – perhaps in their dens last winter.

   One hopes it’s not true. And one wonders whether the story might have held a few days for further reporting. One also hopes that Hume and a few other reporters stay on it and ask experienced, respected wildlife biologists about the hypothesis that few bears on rivers mean they probably are dead. That’s disturbingly plausible. But bears are resourceful, and won’t stay at the rivers if there are no fish to eat. Maybe they are eking by on berries or something? Another flag: the sources in this story, Hume reports, are petitioning the gov’t to close the chum-salmon fishery and also cancel the fall grizzly bear hunting season. So, they may have a tendency for policy reasons to over-interpret the fall-off in bears.

     This will make interesting further reading. And a tip of the hat to Jim Handman at CBC’s Quirks and Quarks show for pointing this story out.

-Charlie Petit

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 1:17 pm and is filed under Science Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.