Black Bear
Re-Introduction Proposal
An idea born in
the wilderness
-Media Release, Mona Sims
What started as an "idea of the moment" during a camping trip has turned
into a growing movement gathering international attention. On Saturday
night the town of Coniston played host to people from all over Ontario
who came out to support the Black Bear Reintroduction Campaign. The
campaign is working to have black bears reintroduced into their once
native homeland in southern Ontario. Speaking to a packed house, Murray
Monk of Nipigon talked about "the growing number of nuisance bears" in
the north and spoke with emotion about the alarming, and "rapidly rising
number of cubs left orphaned" when these nuisance animals are killed.
"We love running with the truth", said Monk.
The campaign, spearheaded by Monk and Eldon Hawton of North Bay, is made
up of an eclectic gathering of people you don't often see working
together. On hand for the dinner Saturday night were people as differing
in their views as vegetarian animal welfare activists and professional
fur trappers. The uniting factor seems to be the desire to see the lives
of nuisance bears saved and fewer cubs left orphaned. Monk says the
slaughter can only intensify as bear populations in the north continue
to rise. He invites all concerned citizens to support this effort.
The fund raising dinner, silent action, and fashion show was richly
supported by companies and individuals representing every region of
northern Ontario, areas in southern Ontario, and from as far away as
North Dakota. The door prize alone was valued at $3500.00. The group
plans to use funds generated at this event to step up and continue the
campaign. You may find more information about the movement at
www.northernontario.org and in the various communities springing up
online that are dedicated to this issue.
MNR says no thanks to bear relocation
plan
By Bryan Meadows -
The Chronicle-Journal
Thunder Bay-based Northwestern Ontario Sportsmen’s Alliance wants the
Ministry of Natural Resources to establish a black bear reintroduction
program for southern Ontario.
The ministry doesn’t seem interested.
NOSA president John Kaplanis has asked Natural Resources Minister David
Ramsay to relocate bears from Northern Ontario to areas in southern
Ontario where they once thrived.
The plan would be similar to the ministry’s successful wild turkey and
elk reintroduction programs.
In a letter to Ramsay, Kaplanis states the move is seen as a viable
solution to the increasing number of nuisance bears across the North.
“The MNR should implement a full scale black bear reintroduction
strategy as part of its ongoing Bear Wise program,” he said.
NOSA and a trapping group called Friends of Fur is spearheading the
initiative on behalf of a coalition of Northern Ontario groups and
individuals.
Kaplanis says bears were exterminated in much of southern Ontario
because they were considered “pests, a liability, a danger that humans
could not share the landscape with.
“But now that society values all creatures . . . is it not reasonable to
ask the people of southern Ontario to let bears back into their
historical range,” he writes. “(Shouldn’t) these people be willing to
accept ‘living with the bears’, as we have been asked to do in the
North.”
MNR spokeswoman Jolanta Kowalski said the ministry isn’t interested in
the proposal.
“We are not about to entertain that idea at all,” she said, adding
southern Ontario has black bears that have been spotted in cities like
Guelph and Orangeville.
NOSA and coalition members plan to erect a billboard and signs to draw
public attention to bear problems and the proposed reintroduction plan.
Groups like NOSA and the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters have
blamed an increase in bear/human encounters on the elimination of the
spring bear hunt five years ago, but the MNR disagrees. The ministry
says it’s a matter of food availability and bear attractants causing the
problem.
Reprinted from the Sudbury Star,
October 14, 2004
Can you imagine restoring magnificent
black bears to a huge part of their historic range in Ontario, south of
cottage country and down into the Golden Horseshoe and the Greater
Toronto area?
That’s the hope of a couple of northern
Ontario visionaries who are more than willing to share excess bears from
cottage country and parts of the north with bear lovers in the south.
The campaign, created by Murray Monk and
Eldon Hawton, and supported by the Friends of Fur and the Northwestern
Ontario Sportsmen’s Alliance is just getting under way.
There’s a big billboard soon to be
unveiled on the Trans-Canada Highway (Highway 17) at Sudbury, actually
between Sudbury and Coniston. Once unveiled, the billboard will feature
a picture of Toronto’s CN Tower, plus the image of a large black bear
and the words “Working Together to Re-Introduce the Black Bear to
Southern Ontario.” It carries the signatures of the Friends of Fur and
of the Northwestern Ontario Sportsmen’s Alliance.
Eldon Hawton (who splits his time between
Sudbury and the North Bay area) is president of the Friends of Fur. He’s
an active angler and hunter, a former trapper and a veteran worker in
the fur industry. He shares honours for the billboard with legendary
trapper Murray Monk, a regional vice-president with the Fur Managers of
Ontario who lives on his trapline 85 miles northeast of Thunder Bay.
Both men say the campaign is quite
serious. And they deny any knowledge of a vaguely similar “proposal”
written 300 years ago by satirist Jonathan Swift. In 1729, the author of
Gulliver’s Travels penned “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children
of Poor People from Being a Burthen to their Parents or the Country and
for Making them Beneficial to the Public.”
Swift’s modest proposal was that the
children of poor families in Ireland be fattened up, sold like livestock
and fed to Ireland’s rich landowners, contributing to the economic
well-being of the nation.
Swift’s proposals were largely ignored in Ireland and Britain. Hawton
and Monk deny any link between Swift’s satiric “Modest Proposal” and
their own “Proposal to Equally Share Ontario’s Excess Bears.”
Details of that proposal are to be found
in full on the Friends of Fur website www.friends-of-fur.org
They’re asking natural resources minister David Ramsay to get behind a
program to relocate the north’s surplus bears on historic range in
southern Ontario. They believe there’s lots of room for bears in area
codes such as 416, 905 and 519.
Hawton and Monk cite MNR’s bear density
map used in its Bear Watch materials as proof that bears aren’t fairly
distributed, with densities of 0 bears per square kilometre in much of
the south.
“We believe the population density of
bears should be equally shared with other people living in Ontario.
According to the MNR there’s plenty of room for all of us. The McGuinty
government should seriously consider the plan to assist the current
natural migration of bears moving south, ‘returning to their historical
former range’. This would allow more Ontarians to equally share the
excess bears.”
Hawton and Monk figure it could be as
successful a wildlife reintroduction as the return of the wild turkey
and the elk to Ontario. They too were species largely extirpated over
much of their original range south of cottage country. Hawton and Monk
can foresee an upsurge in ecotourism with bear viewing at the CN Tower,
Queen’s Park and maybe along the Don Valley Parkway.
They’re hoping that the Ontario
government and the ministry of natural resources will fund the transfers
with the $900,000 per year it is currently spending on its Bear Wise
campaign, aimed at teaching folks from cottage country northward how to
co-exist with bears.
Monk, reached by “tree-phone” (radio
mobile) at his remote home on his trapline 85 miles northeast of Thunder
Bay, says there is lots of suitable habitat and food for bears in the
south.
“They’ve got the same landfills, garbage
cans, school yards, barbeques and bird feeders that we have in North
Bay, Thunder Bay and Timmins. We’d be glad to share our bears with our
neighbours in the south.”
Hawton and Monk are hoping that animal
rights groups such as Bear With Us, the Animal Alliance and the
International Fund for Animal Welfare will raise funds to support a
government backed bear re-introduction program in the south.
“Perhaps Robert Schad (the southern
industrialist who funded the campaign to end the spring bear hunt in
Ontario) will be willing to contribute funds to bring the black bear
back to its historic range in southern Ontario,” says Monk.
Hawton figures that feeding stations for
hungry bears in the fruitlands and vineyards of Niagara and Prince
Edward County would be a major eco-tourism attraction. Both regions have
abundant crops of fresh fruit, apples, pears, peaches that can be shared
with black bears, Hawton says. And, he adds, northern bears accustomed
to slim pickings on wild grape crops would be delighted by the vineyards
of the south.
“They wouldn’t even have to climb a tree
to eat,” suggests Hawton.
To save money, Hawton and Monk figure
that transportable bears could be trapped from landfill site “feeding
stations” in the north. Then, in the south, surplus food from
restaurants, hospitals, nursing homes and households could be dumped by
the hundreds of tons, in southern landfill sites to provide an adequate
on-going food source for the transported bears.
“Relocated bears would have very little
reason to leave these feeding stations and would most likely be content
to live around these landfill sites from early spring right through to
hibernation.”
That’s where Hawton and Monk see the
possibilities for eco-tourism with the southern bear feeding stations
drawing both bears and European/Asian/American tourists eager to see
“real” bears.
Both Hawton and Monk are insistent that their relocation plans are all
open and above board. They say they do not want to be associated with
rumors currently heard in the north about disgruntled tourist outfitters
and northern residents making plans for an illicit mass release of black
bears at Queen’s Park.
Hawton and Monk hope that the Ontario government, just back to work
after a long recess, will add its trillium logo to the billboard and
give its blessing (and some cash) for a massive bear relocation effort.
“It is our desire to stop the indiscriminate slaughter of bears,” says
Monk. “As nuisance animals they are destroyed and wasted with no concern
for cubs. There is an alarming increase in the numbers of orphaned cubs
directly attributable to the current government’s policy of elimination
instead of management. We are offering the McGuinty government a
workable alternative that is better for bears than the current kill and
waste scheme.”
Gary Ball may be contacted at
gball@trytel.net
Note to editors. I think the satiric
nature of this campaign and this column are self-evident. However you
might want to add some sort of warning or disclaimer for readers. Humour
is the intent—Gary Ball
