Training is supplied on important safety issues.
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The Central Plains Capitals midget girls took two wins in exhibition action over last weekend, defeating Interlake 3-1 on Dec. 12 and blanking the Central Plains Senior Women’s team 4-0 on Dec. 13.
The Interlake Lightning are hoping to make the jump to the Manitoba Female Midget Hockey League next season and have been scheduling exhibition games this year to prepare.
“It’s very difficult to run an exhibition schedule, especially starting late in the year when a lot of other teams already have their league schedules and their tournament schedules set. The first year we tried to do that it was hard, but I give them credit for starting it up,” Capitals head coach Ferdi Nelissen said of the Interlake team.
“They said they want to join our league, and hopefully that’s true,” he said, “because they’re very competitive.”
Earning a win on Dec. 12 was nice, especially since the team was short-staffed for the affair.
“We’re still missing our two girls with concussions,” said Nelissen. Jenna Cyrenne and Jillene Rodgers have both been out of the lineup with concussions. “And then there was some conflict with the high school tournament with the Sanford girls.”
The Portage Collegiate Institute Saints hockey team hosted a high school tournament in Portage la Prairie over the weekend and the Sanford Sabres high school team participated in the tournament. Unlike boys hockey, the girls may play for both the high school team as well as the Midget Caps and four girls suit up for both teams. Two of the players, Natasha Kostenko and Jennifer Bell, opted to play with the Caps on Dec. 12 while Nikki Bell and Steph Fehr suited up for their high school club, which was also short-staffed.
“The Interlake game was good. We outshot them badly; we probably had 40-something shots and they had maybe 18 or 19, but it was a competitive game,” said Nelissen. “And then Sunday we beat the Senior women and we did that without Natasha, our leading scorer, but it was good. The girls moved the puck well, cycled well, the goalies were solid, and make a few big saves when the games were tight.”
On Saturday evening, the Capitals will host Brandon at MacGregor. Brandon sits below the Caps in the standings in fourth place, with a record of 2-6. The Caps are in third with a 5-3-1 record, trailing the Yellowhead Chiefs who are 4-1-1.
The difference has been the undefeated Pembina Valley Hawks — whom Yellowhead has only played once, their only loss of the year.
The big test for the Central Plains squad will come on Tuesday when Pembina Valley visits Portage Centennial Arena for a matinee.
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FACE TO FACE: Should the feds shoot down the controversial long-gun registry?
If it feels like Canadians have been debating the merits of the long-gun registry for a long time, it’s because we have.
It was back in 2001 that Jean Chretien’s Liberals introduced the controversial measure that required all owners of hunting rifles and shotguns to register them with the government.
The debate was revived late last year when MP Candice Hoeppner of the Manitoba riding of Portage-Lisgar introduced a private members bill, Bill C-391, which
aims to repeal the registry. The introduction of the bill has caused political pundits, journalists and citizen groups alike to rehash old rhetoric.
“The registry does nothing to stop criminals from getting guns” was a common refrain for anti-registry lobbyists in the 1990s while registry supporters retorted with comments such as “The gun registry will save lives.”
The difference between the debate now and the debate in the ’90s, however, is that we now have almost a decade of empirical evidence about the program’s success — or lack thereof.
Coquitlam resident Gary Mauser, a business professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University, will be travelling to Ottawa next week to speak to the parliamentary committee on public safety about gun control. “The key question is have you shown a link a between the [long-gun registry] legislation and homicide and suicide rates.” Mauser says. “The statistics clearly show that the long-gun registry has not been effective in reducing deaths or accidents.”
According to Mauser, suicide rates in Canada have slowly been declining since the 1970s — long before the registry. The homicide rate dropped dramatically, in both Canada and the United States, in the 1990s and has been flat since then. Accident rates with guns since the long-gun registry was introduced have also remained steady.
The long-gun registry has simply not made a difference.
Governments cannot continue to spend money on programs that aren’t working. The registry was budgeted in 1995 to cost $85 million to operate and is now up to an estimated $2 billion and counting.
It’s time to put a bullet in the long-gun registry and use that money in more effective ways: to hire more police officers, to fund victim services initiatives and to develop programs to combat gang activities.
Manitoba Conservation’s Wildlife and Ecosystem Protection Branch (WEPB) has conducted big game questionnaires for almost 50 years. This questionnaire is vital for the proper management and conservation of Manitoba’s big game species (white-tailed deer, elk, moose, barren-ground caribou, black bear and wolf). The main goal of the questionnaire is to estimate how many animals are harvested annually. This information is essential to determine the number of licenses available, set bag limits and maintain future hunting opportunities.
In the early days of the program, hunters submitted a questionnaire that was attached to their licenses. In other years, the program mailed questionnaires and did telephone interviews. More recently, a sample of non-draw license holders was randomly selected to receive questionnaires with postage-paid return envelopes. All draw license holders received a questionnaire. In 2009, the wildlife branch began collecting questionnaire responses online.
Under the previous, mail-based survey design, participants received paper questionnaires and postage-paid return envelopes. In the interests of efficiency, hunters now receive a postcard requesting that they complete the questionnaire online. As a result, WEPB can now survey every licensed hunter in the province as opposed to just a small sample. All hunters, including those who are not mailed a reminder postcard, are encouraged to go to the questionnaire website at the end of the hunting seasons and complete a questionnaire for each licence purchased. Hunters can receive multiple postcards that occurs when a hunter’s name appears in the database more than once.
Collecting questionnaire responses through the Internet is much faster. Once a response is submitted online, it is automatically put into a database. Receiving the responses sooner means faster reactions to the information. The new system also allows collection of more, and different, types of information.
For a variety of reasons, some hunters purchase a specific licence but do not hunt. Licence holders who did not hunt represent a cross-section of the entire hunting population. WEPB asks that you provide your information to ensure that we receive a representative sample of licensed hunters.
The basic questions asked are:
– How many days did you hunt?
– Where did you hunt?
– What type of animal was harvested, if any?
– How did the animal population in your hunting area compare to previous years? The answer to this question helps us estimate population trends since hunters are important “eyes and ears” in the field.
In addition to the web-based questionnaires, there is a toll-free number to collect hunter information. Call 1-877-892-7627, leave your name and phone number and someone will return your call and take your information.
All responses remain strictly confidential. Responses are used to estimate total harvest for each hunting season. Information is summarized and used by biologists and regional wildlife managers to establish bag limits, season dates and the number of licences available. These questionnaires are a very important part of big game management in Manitoba. Licensed hunters are the link between what happens during this year’s hunting season and how that will affect next year’s hunting season. Summary statistics are available on the WEPB website or by contacting the branch.
Canadians, by a small margin, favour scrapping long gun registration, which hasn’t worked the way it was intended.
Once again, the gun registry is a political issue in Canada.
Tories want registration abolished for long guns — shotguns and hunting rifles — while the Liberals (as ordered by Michael Ignatieff) want it kept, but to make failure to register a gun a non-criminal, ticketing offense.
When gun registration was implemented in 1993 by the Liberal government of Jean Chretien (Bill C-68), the Canadian public was told it would cost $2 million — the difference between what the government paid and what licensing or registration fees would bring in.
By the end of that decade, it was apparent costs had reached $1 billion and rising, with no appreciable decline in the use of firearms in crimes. More significant is the goal of registering every firearm in Canada, largely aimed at reducing crime by making every gun traceable, has been a failure.
In 1974, prior to mandatory gun registration, the justice department figured 10 million guns were owned by Canadians. By 1994, a year after registration, it was estimated there were 7 million guns in Canada.
Does that indicate a 30% decline in gun ownership over 20 years when the population increased by some 40%? Nope. What it indicates is many people didn’t register their long guns, possibly fearing confiscation would be next, or simply mistrusting government intentions.
Whatever the reason, a huge percentage of Canadians who own unregistered guns are un-convicted criminals, which explains why Ignatieff wants to decriminalize failure to register.
Police chiefs (as opposed to police members) publicly support gun registration. Rank and file cops are not so politically correct, and have doubts.
Homicide and suicide rates over the years tend to argue against firearm registration as an inhibiting factor. After firearms registration, Canada’s suicide rate was relatively stable, with a decrease of some 20% in suicide by guns, but a similar increase of suicide “by other means.” Suicide with a gun can be impetuous and messy, but all suicides are fatal, and statistically are relatively constant year after year.
Homicides remain relatively the same before and after gun controls — firearms used in homicides are in the 30% range, with hand guns (banned or registered since 1934) by far the favoured weapon of murder.
Interestingly, Canada and Australia, both with gun controls, have roughly the same homicide rate per 100,000 of population (1.57), but Canadians are twice as likely as Australians to use a gun to murder someone.
In the U.S. the homicide ratio per 100,000 of population is three times higher than in Canada — but murders are six times more likely to be with a gun.
The private member’s bill (C-391) by Manitoba Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner squeezed through two readings (164-137) with the support of a handful of rural Liberal MPs.
Michael Ignatieff “ordering” all Liberal MPs to vote against it on third reading poses an interesting dilemma if there’s an election. Polls show Canadians, by a small margin, favour scrapping gun registration, which hasn’t worked the way it was intended.
Hand guns and automatic assault weapons are the real danger, while the shotgun and hunting rifle are part of the Canadian heritage. Many law-abiding citizens have been branded criminals because they haven’t registered these guns.
That, surely, is a reason to change a bad, unenforceable law.
There was, perhaps, the length of a football pitch between me and the world’s largest terrestrial carnivore. Just in front of me the imposing shape of our guide, “Butch” Saunders paused sharply, one hand clasping the Winchester 303 rifle slung over his shoulder. Ahead, one ton of polar bear was rising onto its haunches.
Instinctively, we followed Butch’s lead, silencing the squelch of boots in the dark, sulphurous mud. The bear scanned the horizon, somehow aware that more than just the sub-Arctic wind was intruding into its afternoon repose.
For a fleeting moment, seared forever on my mind, its gaze fell on three puny human forms, motionless on the tidal flat grass. Planting one huge paw in front, it shortened the length of the football pitch. Then its enormous form wheeled around and it ambled toward the sanctuary of Hudson Bay, just as we backtracked urgently to the safety of a larger cluster of humans behind.
It was late summer in northern Manitoba, when polar bears are forced on to the mainland by the melting Hudson Bay ice. There, amid the beach ridges of spruce conifers – a strikingly different backdrop to the snow and ice with which they are normally associated – the bears migrate northwards, either to mate or await the colder weather and a return to their natural icy hunting ground. Our group of 11, plus four guides, had come to witness this migration, at spell-bindingly close range – which later in our trip would become closer still.
We were on the south-western shore of the bay, a short distance east of York Factory, formerly the headquarters of that Canadian commercial powerhouse, the Hudson’s Bay Company. Described as “a small pocket of civilisation at the edge of the world”, York Factory declined as the world’s appetite for fur dwindled in the late 19th century. Now restored, the whitewashed building is a Canadian National Historic Site, but remains uninhabited for much of the year. The 20th and early 21st centuries have, in fact, done little to alter the remoteness of this starkly beautiful region. Our base, Nanuk Lodge, a cluster of simple wooden cabins, lay 137 miles from the nearest paved road, accessible only by six-seater aircraft from Gillam, a settlement around a hydroelectric dam, or by a protracted, bumpy journey by four-wheel drive.
In Gillam we had our first sense of how much we were at the whim of this raw landscape. Stranded in the tiny airport lounge, our disparate group of Americans, Canadians and one “Brit” waited for fog to burn off at our destination. Like strangers on a broken-down train, we bonded over card games, amusement at the Gillam tourism brochure rack (gapingly empty) and frustration at our lack of movement – until the pilot came in, several hours later, to announce that the fog had lifted.
Transport came in ever diminishing forms: the transatlantic Boeing, then a smaller plane from Winnipeg, then the six-seater that eventually took off from Gillam, then Honda all-terrain tugging vehicles with seated trailers to the rear and, ultimately, Shank’s pony when movement needed to be quiet. The trailers were perhaps most memorable. At every dip of the land, every rock in the rivers we crossed, every mud-spattering wheel spin on the soft tidal flats, we roiled and rolled and slid in synchrony.
Few know these contours more intimately than our guides. Many, like Butch, are Canadian First Nations, from the Cree people, whose forefathers were among the trappers crucial to the success of York Factory. We would rely upon their knowledge of the land, good humour and unerring tracking skills.
At first, however, the bears were elusive. On an initial foray onto the expansive meadow-like grasses, we snatched a long-range glimpse of a lone “boar”– as males are known – lumbering toward the Hudson Bay with a brief backward glance toward us. But this was one only for those with mega-zooms and a steady hand – for the naked eye it was little more than a fuzzy white shape moving toward the horizon.
The bears’ coyness had an unexpected effect. Much of our talk had been of the creatures, fact blurring with legend as tales were swapped of their incredible olfactory feats, aggressive stalking – even, it was rumoured, of beluga whales – and characters (“scavengers, absolute scavengers”, according to one old hand). But, as we travelled a short distance from the Hudson Bay shore, with the grasslands giving way to lunar-like mudflats, our chance of a sighting that day faded.
Almost imperceptibly, other players on this sweeping stage began to make their presence felt. That guttural croak over there? Why, those are sandhill cranes, the monogamous birds that spend summer here. What’s that, flapping rapidly away from the mosquito-choked thicket? A short-eared owl. (“Didn’t you notice how short its ears were?”) And what’s that on the ground there? Huge paw prints pressed into the mud by wolves, interlaced with hoof marks of the caribou or moose they were stalking. Oh, and there’s a wild strawberry (deliciously sweet), and the striking purple flower of the Indian paintbrush. While we’re stopped here, would you like to hold this bald eagle feather we’ve just found?
Soon we took our first, faltering steps into deciphering some of the clues of the wilderness. “Look, I can tell that’s a moose track.” “No, that’s definitely caribou – look at the way it is cleft.” I hazarded a guess at the source of a small collection of bones: “Is it from a wolf cub?” No – one of our guides identified the skeleton as a goose backbone.
The polar bears, we realised, were merely playing a bit-part in this landscape’s drama, as they passed through on their way back to their natural icy stamping grounds. They might be the world’s largest carnivore, but here they were vulnerable – many do not eat for the entire summer, fasting until they return to their usual seal-rich diet. Indeed, here they are arguably not even top of the food chain, a spot fiercely guarded by the wolf.
Yet, the polar bears’ cameo was the one we were all here to see – and we had still not seen them close up. As the season advances, bears often come right up to the perimeter fence of the lodge. But that was later, and on the third day, our last full one, our guides had a sense of urgency as they prepared to take us out. It had not, however, permeated all the visitors – a couple lingered too long over the home-cooked breakfast of French toast and maple syrup, delaying our departure. And so, to our guides’ chagrin, the whole party found themselves cut off by the high tide of a nearby river delta, forced to while away time until the waters ebbed later that morning.
Some of the group went to inspect the remains of a beluga whale skeleton, beached and picked clean, a little way towards Hudson Bay. I trudged a little farther, pausing by a pool lapping a bank of gravelly sand before the bay. Idly, I scraped my wellington boots in the soft mud of the receding water, watching as bubbles filtered to the surface before noticing the brisk approach of the rotund shape of Gordy, one of our guides.
“You’re playing a very dangerous game, my friend,” he chided as he drew near. “If a bear was on the other side,” he said, gesturing towards the sand bank, “you wouldn’t even see him before he got you – they can run at 30 kilometres an hour.”
Chastened, although slightly disbelieving, I headed back to the vehicles (I later checked and they can actually run even faster – Usain Bolt would comfortably be reeled in by a polar bear at full tilt).
After I heard of the bears’ speed on dry land, we finally crossed the river – and Butch highlighted their prowess in the water, indicating a white speck moving swiftly through the bay (in addition to their land speed, polar bears have been known to swim more than 150 miles non-stop). As we sat watching on logs by the shore, we started to wonder if this was as close as we would get.
And then, a veritable bear bonanza was under way. Where most of us could just see endless tidal flats, Butch saw polar bears – and lots of them. Inching nearer on the all-terrain vehicles, we cut the engines – and, impatient to get closer, I volunteered to follow Butch on foot, along with a Californian student photojournalist. After that exhilarating first encounter less than a football pitch away, we thought perhaps that the best was over. It wasn’t. Later, the whole group dismounted the vehicles and we concealed ourselves in the foliage of a mosquito-infested ancient beach ridge. Gooseberry thorns pierced my legs; then a plaintive cry of “I’ve got a bug in my pants” rang out from nearby scrub – I wasn’t the only one in discomfort.
Neither insects nor prickly bushes could distract from the mesmerising scene that followed, however. On the far side of a rough meadow, a sow nosed out into a clearing, with two young cubs in tow. Tentatively, she edged forward, sniffing the air, anxious to steer clear of several nearby boars. Making her way around the edge, she turned towards us, head raised. Perhaps it was a superfluous rustle – a gooseberry thorn or bug too far – but something spooked her. Breaking into a run, she veered toward the tree cover, her offspring gambolling behind. In one unforgettable movement, she reared onto her hind legs, her white body framed by a spruce behind as she surveyed the area for threats. Then she dropped back onto all-fours and moved swiftly away through a shield of trees, her infants still on her tail.
The incident dominated the dinner-table talk that evening as we tucked into tender steaks and Norwegian apple pie. Later, we watched the aurora borealis flicker, then dance in the night sky. A proper description remained as nebulous as ever, so I took to outlining the shapes they formed. On the left, look that’s a brontosaurus, while on the right, yes, that’s definitely the subject from Munch’s The Scream.
Perhaps the last vestiges of that game were still drifting in my subconscious the next day, as I gazed out from the tiny plane at the lodge and its hospitable staff disappearing below. We stayed low at first, spotting a few polar bears and the rusting hulk of a centuries-old wreck on a final fly-by. Then, with the aircraft rising as the tidal flats ebbed into taiga forest, I began to trace the shapes of the boreal landscape below. That game, too, had to stop as the human-wrought forms of a giant hydroelectric project and the functional grey of the purpose-built surrounding town eventually shifted into view – man-made shapes re-emerging from the wild.
VANCOUVER, B.C. – British Columbia’s controversial annual grizzly bear hunt leaves more of the animals dead than even the province’s own wildlife guidelines allow, claims a new report by the David Suzuki Foundation that once again calls on the government to curb the trophy hunt.
The report was released Thursday – on the first day of this year’s grizzly hunt when hundreds of the bears will be killed by trophy hunters around the province, something critics have maintained is unsustainable and must stop.
“This is new science that really questions the sustainability of the hunt,” Faisal Moola of the foundation said in an interview.
“This is a disaster in the waiting. If we do not act to protect the species given what we know about its vulnerabilities, we may no longer have bears.”
The report uses provincial government records to examine the number of grizzly bears that were killed by humans between 2004 and 2008 and compares them with the province’s own limits for what it calls the allowable human-caused mortality rate.
B.C.’s grizzly bears are divided into 57 different population areas.
The report says in 20 of those areas, hunting alone accounted for more grizzly deaths than the province’s allowable mortality rates at least once during the five-year period of the study.
When combined with other human-caused grizzly deaths – including legal kills by wildlife management officials and illegal poaching – the mortality rates were exceeded at least once in 36 areas, or 63 per cent.
That higher number, said Moola, is the most important, because it shows that too many bears are killed even when the hunt doesn’t push the grizzly deaths over the limits.
“You can’t look at trophy hunting in isolation – you have to look at trophy hunting in addition to the other sources of human-caused mortality,” said Moola.
“What the study shows is that if you removed trophy hunting from the picture, you would actually drop the mortality rate below what the government thinks is sustainable.”
The report is accompanied by a letter to Premier Gordon Campbell, signed by eight grizzly bear experts from Canada and the United States, urging the provincial government to establish a provincewide network of no-hunting zones.
British Columbia is estimated to be home to half of all grizzlies in Canada, and a quarter of the North American grizzly population.
B.C.’s grizzlies are considered a species of “special concern” by both the federal and provincial governments because of their slow reproductive rates and susceptibility to human activities.
Grizzly hunting is restricted in parts of the province, but every year a trophy hunt opens up throughout much of British Columbia during the spring and fall. The David Suzuki Foundation report estimates that, since 2001, an average of 253 bears a year have been killed by hunters in B.C.
There have been perennial calls for the hunt to be scrapped, but the Liberal government has consistently rejected those calls, arguing the hunt is sustainable and properly managed.
In 2001, the NDP government of the day implemented a moratorium on grizzly hunting, but that was overturned a few months later after the Liberals took power.
Environment Minister Barry Penner issued a written statement defending the province’s grizzly management policies, insisting hunting wouldn’t be allowed if it jeopardized the bear population.
Penner, who acknowledged he hadn’t read the report and has told his ministry staff to review it, said the mortality rates set by the province are stricter than the standards recommended by peer-reviewed scientific studies of the region’s grizzly population.
“Our record on grizzly bear population management is strong,” he said.
“The independent Grizzly Bear Scientific Panel, comprised of independent bear experts appointed on the recommendation of the International Association for Bear Research and Management, confirmed that B.C.’s grizzly bear management approach is effective and that our population estimates are sound. ”
He also noted the province has closed almost two million hectares of land to grizzly hunting along the North and Central Coasts, and there are other strict no-kill zones elsewhere in the province.
Hunting and outfitting groups sent out their own news releases responding to the report, challenging the study’s conclusions and defending the hunt as sustainable and important to the province’s economy.
Mel Arnold of the B.C. Wildlife Federation, which represents hunters and anglers, said harvest rates are set over five-year periods, so it’s wrong to point to figures from a single year as evidence that too many bears were killed.
“They (the five-year averages) may fall above it in some areas, and if that is the case, we would support adjustments being made,” Arnold said in an interview.
“Hunting and trapping is part of the heritage that built this country, and it’s part of our culture.”
There are differing opinions on the health of bear populations in British Columbia, and conservation groups such as the David Suzuki Foundation suggest the government’s current methods to estimate how bears are actually roaming the wilderness are flawed.
Alberta placed a moratorium on grizzly bear hunting in 2006, and is currently examining whether to keep the ban or revisit the issue.
Last year, the Manitoba government added grizzly bears to a list of species protected under the provincial wildlife act.
Grizzly bears have been extinct from Manitoba for a century, but migrant bears from Nunavut have been spotted, raising hopes the species is making a return.
JESSIEVILLE, Ark. — On a recent Monday afternoon, field biologists Wade Walker and Matt Mourot of the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission carefully approached an open rock crevice in a stunningly scenic portion of the Ouachita Mountains.
They planned to use a blowgun to tranquilize the female black bear inside the crevice, so they could safely study her and any cubs she might be tending.
But momma bear wasn’t totally down with the plan.
When Walker fired the shot from the blowgun, the bear let out an ominous growl and lunged at the biologists, who fled from the den in fear.
“I thought she was coming out of there,” said Walker, his heart rate obviously elevated. “They don’t do that very often.”
After another dart with a stronger dosage, the mother bear fell into a deep, peaceful sleep, and the biologists were able to enter the den.
They emerged with a 6-pound bear cub that would be a total delight for the crowd of spectators for the next 90 minutes.
“Every time we do one of these den surveys, people just can’t get enough of these cubs,” said Myron Means, coordinator of the AGFC‘s bear program. “We learn a lot from these surveys — and people just really get a kick out of handling these bears.”
The black bear population in Arkansas is rock-solid, with an estimated 4,000 bears roaming the Ozark Mountains, the Ouachita Mountains and a small area along the White River.
But the bear population once fell to dangerously low numbers — and the den surveys are designed to make sure it never happens again.
The Bear State?
Black bears were so plentiful in 19th-century Arkansas that it was known as “The Bear State” instead of “The Natural State” as it’s known today.
But those native bears were hunted nearly to extinction by people who needed light and heat.
“A lot of people think the Arkansas bears were hunted out for meat by people who wanted them for food,” Means said. “But they were actually over-hunted because of the oil that their fat produces. The only way people could get oil for heat or light was from bear fat or whale blubber.”
Bear fat was such a valuable commodity that by the mid-1950s, there were only about 50 bears remaining in Arkansas.
That’s when a massive restocking effort began in the Ozarks and the Ouachitas, with bears being brought in from Minnesota and Manitoba, Canada.
“The bears along the White River are believed to be the only native bears remaining in Arkansas.” Means said. “The others are from the restocking efforts. But as a whole, the bear population in Arkansas is doing very well.”
Amazing comeback
The recovery of the Arkansas bear is actually considered one of the world’s most successful large carnivore re-introduction programs.
It worked so well that in 1980, the state determined it had enough bears to once again allow an annual organized hunting season. That season has been held ever since — and last year, Arkansas hunters harvested a record 533 black bears.
“The bear population is doing very well, and bear hunting is growing in popularity to the point that it’s becoming a staple sport,” Means said. “We have people coming here from Tennessee, Ohio, Missouri — you name it. They’re traveling to Arkansas from all over the country to hunt bears.”
That increased interest in bear hunting is one more reason why Means and company must keep a close eye on the state’s bear numbers.
That’s where the den studies play a vital role.
Learning about bears
Every year during summer, AGFC biologists trap female bears and fit them with radio collars. Then during late winter and early spring, they use telemetry equipment to locate the female bears inside their dens.
With the bears located, they use tranquilizer darts to put them into a deep — but definitely temporary — sleep. This allows biologists to check the health of the adult bear and change the batteries in her radio collar if necessary.
It also allows the biologists to count the cubs, study their health and take important measurements like weight, paw length and width, body length and girth and head width.
“By taking the same measurements from all the cubs we study, we can develop a model for what they should be,” Means said. “We know what a healthy weight is, and if we come across a cub that’s not healthy, we can investigate and try to find out why.”
Bears in the Ozark Mountains are dependant mostly on fall mast crops like acorns and usually have just two cubs. In the Ouachita Mountains, they have hard mast and soft mast like berries and fruits, so they tend to produce three cubs.
The bear they studied in the Ouachita Mountain on March 8 is known affectionately by the biologists as “McKenzie.” She usually has three cubs but this time had only one.
“This is the first time we’ve ever found a mother bear with just one cub,” Means said. “That tells us that reproduction is down for this particular bear. It’s something we’ll need to keep an eye on — not only with this bear but in this region.”
Still, for the spectators, one cub was plenty.
“I would really love to take this little guy (it was actually a female) home with me,” said Haley Hall, a young visitor from Little Rock. “This is one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen in my life.”
JUST THE BEAR FACTS
Adult female black bears usually weigh less than 300 pounds. Full-grown males weigh between 400 and 700 pounds.
Bears have poor eyesight but an extraordinary sense of smell.
They are one of Arkansas’ most intelligent mammals.
The lifespan for a black bear in the wild is about 25 years.
Contrary to popular belief, black bears are not true hibernators like woodchucks or ground hogs.
Instead of shutting their systems down completely, bears go into periods of deep sleep with slow-moving metabolisms. But they can arouse out of that state immediately.
Bears don’t go into their periods of deep sleep in response to cold weather but rather when food is no longer available.
Black bears go through their gestation period under a full fast, meaning they nurse their cubs while they’re fasting. They don’t eat or drink anything for 41/2 months and nurse their cubs all the while. Because adult female bears drink no water while they’re nursing cubs, their milk is very rich, and cubs gain as much as a pound a week.
Bears breed during the summer months, and males cover large areas searching for females. Young are born in the winter den. Mother and cubs emerge from the den by mid-May, and the cubs begin learning about life in the wild.
Cubs den with their mothers again the following winter and stay with her until the next summer when she finally drives them away.
Pigs aren’t usually animals people think they have to worry about. But wild pigs could change that if they make it into Montana.
This animal, also known as wild hog, wild boar or feral pig, has been stirring up a ruckus in almost every U.S. state and Canadian province. Wildlife biologists fear that Montana, one of only five states without feral pigs, could be the next state these swine sweep into.
Alhough feral pigs are considered a game animal in some states, they are considered a pest in others.
After working as the chief of wildlife management for Manitoba, Brian Knudsen made feral pigs his main concern. Knudsen was working with a group of researchers from Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Kansas who gathered feral pig population statistics, and he became so interested with the problem that he made it part of his life’s work.
Knudsen now runs Knudsen Wildlife Management Systems in Manitoba, where he offers consulting for wildlife management problems. While this pays the bills, Knudsen focuses his personal research on the spread of feral pigs with the Northern Feral Pig Project.
Pigs came with the Spanish when they took control of the southeast United States in the 1500s. Some pigs were fenced in while others were released as game animals. Then about 20 to 30 years ago, Knudsen said, people began to notice the wild pig population was expanding.
In the mid-1990s, Knudsen mapped the spread of feral pigs. His study found that pigs had reached Kansas and Missouri, a significant shift north. Knudsen said the pigs spread because hunters trapped and loaded groups into livestock trucks, then drove them to other states and released them.
A recent survey conducted by Knudsen showed that the pigs had spread into Manitoba, Alberta, British Columbia, Michigan and Wisconsin.
North Dakota veterinary officials had to eradicate a herd of pigs in 2008. The officials used traps and had to shoot pigs from helicopters in what Knudsen said was an “almost military-like” extermination. He said the important message was that those were the measures they had to take to get rid of the animals.
Knudsen commended North Dakota for being organized and realizing how serious the problem was so they could take control of it so quickly.
“This is what needs to be done,” Knudsen said. “It’s a model that states like Montana can follow with profit.”
It is unknown when or how the pigs will enter Montana. Knudsen said it could be next year or 20 years from now. But the most important thing, he said, is having a plan for when the time comes. He compared it to having a fire department: “It’s there in case you need it.”
“You can hold them off,” Knudsen said. “Southern states will never get rid of them. Montana and North Dakota, if they are ready, they can hold them off.”
Several varieties of pigs are actually the same species. Eurasian boars and domestic pigs look different but interbreed successfully, Knudsen said.
One of the reasons they are such successful pests is that sows can have one to two litters a year with about nine to 15 piglets per litter. Knudsen said that sows are good mothers and keep the pig survival rate high.
Pigs are also very intelligent, he said. If pigs survive a trap encounter, they will not return to another trap like it.
An evenly distributed layer of body fat helps keep them alive in the United States colder northern regions where people didn’t think the animals could survive because they lack a heavy fur coat.
Feral pigs root around, digging up food in the soil. If they do this around streams, their feces can get into the watershed. Weeds can thrive in the upturned dirt. They also destroy the nests of ground-nesting birds, which could threaten native bird species.
“There is no co-existing,” Knudsen said.
It was Knudsen who sounded the alarm to Missoula bear specialist and biologist Chuck Jonkel. Jonkel said many people in Missoula hadn’t heard of the feral pig problem.
“People keep asking me why I am calling bears ‘pigs,’” Jonkel said.
Jonkel and Knudsen are old friends, and in a meeting several years ago, Knudsen shared his concern for Montana’s wildlife safety. Jonkel said he took it upon himself to raise the alarm that feral pigs are a looming threat to Montana’s habitat, and as far as he knows, the state hasn’t done anything about it.
“The state ought to be proactive and have a wild pig project ready so they are ready to roll,” Jonkel said.
Known for his work with grizzly bears, Jonkel said the pigs would affect other state-protected wildlife, including bears. He said pigs would compete directly with bears for food, and because the pigs reproduce fast and bears reproduce relatively slow, the pigs could easily outnumber the bears within a short amount of time.
Jonkel said trophy hunters want bigger boars, so hunters will run the show if they have a population of pigs to lobby for. He said he thinks that Montana should categorize the pigs as a pest before the hunting community can get behind them. He said states that make the pigs a game animal end up with thousands of pigs, and by that point, it’s too late to get rid of them.
“Once they get established, they are formidable,” Jonkel said.
Jonkel said a study he read listed only six states without feral pigs, including Wyoming and Montana, but he has heard there are populations in Wyoming, which would make it just five states.
Jonkel said a few years ago, a group of domestic pigs escaped and got out of control in the Grant Creek area. A friend of Jonkel’s who worked with the state then had to go into the area and shoot all the pigs before they established themselves further.
“He just blew them all away, and that’s what the state has to be ready to do,” Jonkel said. “Kill them right away with state employees.”
Glen Chilton obsesses about the beleaguered labrador duck while Lil Anderson recalls pond memories in a pair of new books
Pity the labrador duck. The mussel-eating waterfowl had the bad luck to winter in places such as New York harbour and Chesapeake Bay. It’s been extinct for more than a hundred years.
Glen Chilton is a ornithologist and behavioural ecologist. He studied at the universities of Manitoba and Calgary.
He’s also, he readily admits, something of an obsessive. Volunteering to write an encyclopedia article about the little known Camptorhynchus labradorius, he was compelled to dig up every detail he could find. The result of his obsession is The Curse of the Labrador Duck (Harper Collins).
He wound determined to examine every stuffed labrador duck he could find – something like four-and-a-half dozen. After peeking and poking (his words) Canadian specimens, he traveled from Philadelphia to St. Petersburg, with stops in England, Dublin, Germany, Vienna, Prague and George Sand’s hometown.
Now, Chilton is a very gifted storyteller which makes this book, about an obsessive ornithologist hunting every example he could find of a little-known extinct duck, far more entertaining than it should be. Ridiculously fun.
Along the way, there are bad hotels, mysterious duck eggs, bemused train ticket sellers in Limoges and a fake quacker in Halberstadt. Plus, he’s a offering a $10,000 reward for a stuffed labrador duck he hasn’t seen yet.
. . .
Some books are just charming. Lil Anderson’s Pond Memories: More Tails from a Wildlife Rehabilitator (Turnstone Press) is one.
Anderson, a wildlife technician for Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources, operates, with her husband, a Kenora-area rehab centre for wild animals. People call Anderson when they come across a wild animal in some distress, abandoned babies and the like.
That sounds like fun, but try bottle-feeding a baby porcupine or constructing a playpen for a baby moose. Anderson is wary of imprinting on her young charges, keeping in mind the dictum that these animals should return to their natural habitat.
Anderson is a delight. Her subjects are individuals but thankfully she never humanizes them. She writes about learning how to communicate with a diminutive fawn and what to do if a nervous pelican swallows a flashlight. There are sad moments, too, but also some touching reunions.
I’ll always remember the story of the fox kit returning for her favourite stuffed toy.
With photographs and drawings of Brownie the moose, Persephone the fawn, P’Silla the porcupette, and goslings Lucky and Janice as well as, Cameron, a bossy, very big beaver.
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