Outrage over bear birth-control plan in Whistler
Idea of sterilizing fall visitor horrifies local bear expert
Clare Ogilvie
The Province
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
CREDIT: Michael Allen file photo - for The Province
A Whistler agency wants to give a birth-control injection to Jeanie, the resort's best-known black bear.
WHISTLER -- A proposal to inject the resort's best-known bruin with birth control has some local bear lovers growling in anger.
Jeanie, a large bear, and her many cubs are followed like a soap opera in the columns of the local papers. She has had nine cubs from five litters over 14 years.
But when Jeanie and her cubs wander down to the resort in the fall and forage in garbage, she puts herself and the young bears at risk.
In Whistler, a garbage bear is often a dead bear.
So the Get Bear Smart Society of Whistler wants to put Jeanie on birth control.
"I don't think the risk is that great and I think it may save her life in the long term," said the society's executive-director, Sylvia Dolson.
"She is only getting into trouble when she has cubs and other times she stays on Whistler Mountain, so perhaps this would work to keep her out of conflict," said Dolson.
The birth control, known as immunosterilization, is given by injection and lasts between one and five years. It would be its first use in Canada on a wild bear.
Last fall, it wasn't unusual for conservation officers to get between 20 and 30 bear-complaint calls a day, numbers that were last seen in the 1990s. Officers killed 13 bruins.
But local bear expert Michael Allen, who has followed Jeanie since he arrived in Whistler 15 years ago, is fiercely opposed to the idea of giving her birth control. He sees it as a "cop-out" by the municipality so it doesn't have to deal with the issue of garbage.
"We are not dealing with the root of the problem, garbage, and I am losing patience with the system," said Allen, who has been studying black bears for 23 years. Jeanie is named after his Scottish grandmother.
Dolson agrees that the municipality needs to do more to manage its garbage. The society is auditing private garbage disposal in town and conducting a landscape audit to get rid of any plants that might attract bears into the valley.
"The garbage is the No. 1 problem, without any doubt whatsoever," she said.
Whistler Mayor Ken Melamed said council takes the bear issue seriously, but it cannot take responsibility for everyone's behaviour.
"We have a bear-proof collection system, but it is all of the activity that happens outside of the system that is a failure and that really lands on the shoulders of personal behaviour," he said.
Meanwhile, the B.C. Ministry of the Environment is not keen on bear birth control.
Ministry spokeswoman Kate Thompson said: "It is an experimental vaccine and we don't have enough information on it . . . so we wouldn't be able to endorse its use.
"But we are certainly going to be interested to see what develops with the research in other jurisdictions."
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© The Vancouver Province 2008
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