Canada may relocate bears to border
Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, June 20, 2001
Associated Press
SEATTLE — The government of British Columbia is proposing to capture 25 grizzlies from the Canadian north country and release them just north of the U.S. border in a provincial park.
Biologists hope the grizzly relocation, just north of the border from the Okanogan National Forest in north-central Washington, would recolonize a cross-border population considered the most troubled in British Columbia and the contiguous United States.
"If the population on one side increases, then, effectively the shared population increases because bears don’t recognize borders," provincial bear biologist Matt Austin, who is coordinating the recovery plan, told a Seattle newspaper.
But because Canada is coordinating the reintroduction plan, U.S. critics, including some Eastern Washington livestock owners, will have less influence over the outcome. They don’t like that the U.S. government is working with the Canadians on the issue.
"Frankly, that goes completely against the Bush administration’s announcing they were going to back up local people," said Bonnie Lawrence, who is with a coalition of natural-resource users in northeastern Washington, many of whom oppose grizzly recovery.
Under the plan, five female grizzlies would be relocated every year for five years. Relocated bears would be fitted with ear tags and radio collars and released into Manning Provincial Park just before hibernation.
The plan is not final and could still be delayed, but officials on both sides of the border contend the plan has more momentum than ever. It could begin as soon as this fall.
Officials believe 17 grizzlies may live just north of the international border in British Columbia, including a female with cubs. But grizzlies on the U.S. side are so rare that one scientist has dubbed that population "the walking dead." The habitat is believed to be able to sustain 300 bears.
The last confirmed sighting of a grizzly in the North Cascades was in 1996. Over the past two decades, only about 20 bears have been seen in 10,000 square miles of Washington between the Canadian border and Interstate 90.
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