The Khutzeymateen Grizzly Bear Ecological Reserve Proposal; Rationalizing the Needby Jorma Jyrkkanen (My original produced about 1985)
Introduction
If one is to evaluate whether or not to save this pristine ecosystem along with its predominantly predatory denizens, one should look at grizzlies from both near and afar and their relationship to the human population explosion.
The Cave bear was probably the first to go extinct due to our activities. One could well imagine primitive Cave People fighting with these spelluncking denizens with dogs and spears and thwarting them away at night with fires.
This was direct competition for habitat at its most basic and the rationale of those primitive Cave peoples’ efforts was human need to live. That was fine when the human population was sparse, but that has changed.
More recently, the Atlas bear of North Africa has vanished due to loss of habitat from excessive logging and poor reforestation coupled to hunting at excessive levels.
Climatic changes may have been a contributing factor, a component of which may have been human induced.
The Mexican Silver grizzly is now probably extinct.
In Poland, the Brown bear is holding at around 30 animals and according to Tadeusz Buchalczyk, there is a necessity of creating extensive less disturbed areas to return the animals to their former high population.
In Bulgaria, the Brown bear population is stable at around 520 and hunting is prohibited.
In China, the Panda bear, evolved from primitive Arctos stock is threatened with extinction today due to loss of bamboo forests related to human expansion.
In the USA, the grizzly is on the endangered species list in 48 contiguous states due to hunting and habitat loss related to the human population explosion. In the past century, in California, it has declined from an estimated 5000 bears to perhaps two in a zoo today obtained from Canada.
In Canada, this bear once hunted over the prairies and may have lived as far east as Manitoba until quite recent times, but not so today.
In British Columbia, it was once present in the south Cascades but is now rare there if not actually extirpated. It is rare if not extirpated in much of the Okanagan and is most probably declining in all of the major developed river valleys with salmon runs.
It is holding its own in parts of BC and Alaska in remote areas and in a few wildlife management units where there exist vast tracts of habitat or where we just haven’t got to yet with our encroachment.
It is threatened by expanding rural populations of humans who shoot it when it comes into conflict with livestock. Many bears lose the use of developing areas due to their shyness. According to Leland P. Glenn, adult males using open areas with sparse cover get shot out.
Thus, those bears that stay in developing areas will be shot out while those that leave will be pushed into peripheral marginal habitat where they will probably have lower survival, thus driving the population down in the face of that development.
Management
Inventories of grizzlies are expensive and population estimates are currently based on questionable indirect means, not actual counts. In at least six management units in the Skeena region, they were over-harvested according to biologist Ben VanDrimmelen. Thus, in a good proportion of the region, we don’t know what they are doing population-wise for certain, and in the remainder, they are probably being over-harvested.
Population trend estimation from hunter success is questionable since in Sweden, where a small population is thought to be increasing, hunter success is in fact declining.
Management for a critical average age is one method proposed for maintaining bear populations by D.M. Johnson (1980) but it assumes that an adequate sample of the population will be taken to ensure confidence in the statistic.
This may not be possible with grizzlies because of the low harvest rates and subsequent small sample size per unit area.
This doesn’t seem like a sound way to manage a globally declining species in the face of the human population explosion.
Long range habitat and management provisions seem to be needed while there is time and habitat available.
Mark L. Schaffer (1983) has estimated that the minimum viable population size to maintain a grizzly population is 50 to 90 animals with about 1000 to 13,500 square kms being required for habitat.
The Khutzeymateen population is probably less than 50 grizzlies ranging over 540 square kms, less than Schaffer’s estimated requirement for a minimum viable population on half the minimum space.
This means that this population is sensitive being near the bottom of the minimum viable population, if Schaffer’s estimate is correct.
Research on the long term population impact of logging on bears is far from concluded and many important questions remain.
What is the extinction rate/area relationship for grizzlies with and without hunting?
What is the extinction rate/area relationship with and without hunting with and without logging?
What habitat manipulation strategies lead to balanced nutrition in bear populations and if attainable, does it lead to stable population cycles?
Are grizzlies self-regulating and if so, is it through agonistic behavior where aggressive and avoidance responses carry out density adjustments and spacing?
If bears are self regulating, will increasing the crowding by forcing bears into buffer strips lead to more aggressive interactions and to increased competition and infanticide or cannibalism?
Is agonistic regulation if a reality, increased by resource shortages?
The answers to these questions are particularly applicable to the Khutzeymateen where the population is near the bottom of the minimum viable size.
Crowding and habitat shortages have been shown to induce qualitative changes in other mammal populations and these have even been suggested as causes of population declines (C. Krebs, 1974).
The high valley walls and glaciers ringing this watershed mean that there is probably minimal immigration into this valley and that we are dealing here with a genetic population that is geographically isolated and probably well inbred, perhaps reflecting the genotype of the founder population that colonized this area shortly after the last glaciation.
In this respect, the genes of this population would represent a fine control gene pool to compare the evolution of bears in more direct conflict with human encroachment.
Development Impacts
Windthrow, erosion, plant species dominance changes and human activities would have the most important effect on grizzly habitats in the Khutzeymateen. Other factors may well influence grizzly habitat as well including site preparation and species of conifer being restocked.
For grizzlies, research has shown that life is a movable feast and there is a season to be feeding on particular foods. Each season therefore has its special foods and those foods need to be present in sufficient abundance to maintain the population during that season.
What I noted on one of my visits to the valley is the close juxtaposition of foods for all seasons, a perfect smorgasbord in a constrained valley, one that obviously supports a small stable grizzly population.
Knowing that there are estuarine grasses and sedges and riparian grasses as well for spring feed, skunk cabbages later on and other roots and shoots, pink salmon for summer along with huckleberry, salmonberry and later runs of coho to enjoy with osier berries and devil’s club fruit, all in proportion adequate to meet the needs of this population, suggests to me that logging activities cannot improve on this basic balanced ecosystem.
It will in fact place it in serious danger. To prevent windthrow, one would have to leave large tracts of tall streamside spruce, abhorrent to the logger, or to not log at all or to log right to the stream’s edge, a situation ripe for erosion and damage to the fish population.
To regenerate conifers, fruit bearing bushes would need to be either fire damaged or herbicided, activities that seriously changes the dominance of those species and the balanced relationships each must have in their respective season of use by grizzlies. Burns, depending on conditions, can either suppress or kill valuable food species while herbicides often kill even the root systems of plants or they may promote one food species at the expense of another.
If the new forest is allowed to close its canopy 15-25 years hence, there will be little light penetration to the forest floor thus killing what fruiting species survived thereby further damaging the vegetation balance further.
There will be the noise of development, a harassment to bears, and it may well drive many shy bears out of the valley where they may not have as high a survival rate, thereby impacting on the population.
Some bears may have to be shot or transported for threatening humans in inadvertent encounters. Even foresters and biologists carry guns for protection so that preliminary development reconnaissance may impact on their population, if it is already tenuous, as in the Khutz.
Insect pests, porcupines, stand tending, thinning and so on all require presence of humans, leading to further human impacts of an unforeseen nature.
Skidding and yarding tall spruce over soft valley soils may cause unavoidable damage to fish habitat through erosion and debris and vegetation decomposition.
Siltation and erosion induced by logging will be unavoidable and from research at Carnation creek, we do not yet know how long it will take to stabilize a watershed from these effects. This will impact on the salmon species and as yet, we cannot precisely predict how, once again placing the seasonal food balance into jeopardy.
Spawning gravel recruitment to the system may well change in gravel and particle size and abundance with deleterious effects on certain fish stocks. There will probably be an increase in fine sands and pea gravel’s, making it more difficult for fry to emerge and for eggs to obtain oxygen. Research has identified this as one of the main impacts of logging.
A healthy fish population each present in abundance in season is one of the key food resources for the bears in this valley.
Black bears are also present in the valley and grizzly may well feed on them and occasionally vice versa.
There is thus a dynamic equilibrium between the grizzly and black bear populations, which may well swing towards favoring the blacks which respond better to disturbed sites.
I noted not a single ungulate in the valley floor on two visits, though goats could be seen on the valley walls. There were wolves present though. I have since been informed by a research assistant to Bear Biologist, Wayne McRory, that there is one moose in the valley, but he is very nervous.
The main mystery to me of the Khutzeymateen is how three large predators manage to coexist without ungulate prey species?
This would be a wonderful research question to address in the Khutzeymateen and perhaps only in the Khutzeymateen.
Conclusion
I have described how vegetation changes and management intervention and human activities might throw the existing dynamic equilibrium out of balance.
Any development whatsoever would require human management intervention to prevent harm to the grizzly population, thus destroying this balanced wilderness ecosystem forever.
I have shown how the bear is declining globally, nationally and provincially. There is no ecological reserve dedicated to this species anywhere in Canada.
I have demonstrated how we are largely ignorant of its actual numbers, method of population regulation, or the impact we are having on it through our management strategies.
We cannot guarantee the protection of the Khutzeymateen population with the present state of knowledge as we cannot foresee what will happen to affect the forests there once we intervene.
We cannot guarantee stability of habitat protection measures because of political whims that affect government policies and personnel, over four years, let alone over the rotation period of such a forest.
It will not be cheaper to set aside a valley in the future for these magnificent animals, nor will it be possible to find a pristine one when most of the country is into second growth.
The Natives often included the bear in their totems, and people might belong to the bear clan. The bear is thus connected to humans spiritually.
In this sense, I found that my own spirit took second place to the spirit of the bear in this isolated valley.
I have been to the Khutzeymateen and I found a world where I was the alien. It was a precious experience and one which we should reserve for our grandchildren and beyond.
Even armed with fire-arms, our safety was not guaranteed if the Inhabitants had rebelled. But they did not.
I found the inhabitants shy, curious and peaceful though a bit fearful of our presence.
For human kind to be humbled thus is a wonderful experience, for we have devastated and conquered almost every niche of the Planet and reveled in our arrogance.
To satisfy our curiosity, we seek to communicate with inhabitants of other worlds by sending satellites beaming radio messages proclaiming our glorious existence.
Ironically, here, right under our very noses, shuddering before the threatening blades of the poised iron cats, is a world with strong proud inhabitants not unlike ourselves in many ways, masterfully living in harmony with other kinds.
Yet, we do not seek to communicate with them, or to understand their social structure because of our curiosity, or the secrets of their harmony with their environment because we must soon learn to live with our own environment, instead, we callously seek to destroy their world to satisfy our greed and arrogance.
Are we not yet civilized enough, to give this strong, proud symbol of a world that flourished prior to the human explosion, a tiny remnant of that once untainted land, the valley of the Khutzeymateen?
Copyright 1998 Jorma Jyrkkanen. All rights reserved.
