Might make for an interesting development on future seasons of Alone if Grizzles become a common presence on Vancouver Island.
My understanding of read materials so far is the amount of work gone into the program to risk profile danger was incredible, the change in risk profile of the addition of Grizzles on top of wolves and black bears would be quite an adjustment.
They have done at least one season in Interior BC where Grizzlies are present. They have also done seasons in northern Canada where within range of those predators as well.
The specific location was kept out of publications for a while but unfortunately the cat is now out of the bag. It looks like an earlier story from near the end of August also divulged that info. Hopefully they are given space next year but there is a real risk that many people will now drive to that spot for a sighting. It was quite impressive that the location was kept out of publications for as long as it was but eventually someone had to ruin that.
> It’s also possible that people perceived grizzlies as more threatening and drove them away from food sources, perhaps even killing them.
Kinda funny that this is framed as a less likely theory.
If it was somewhat uncommon for bears to swim across the strait and there weren’t too many, I think it’s enormously likely that First Nations would have actively seeked to rid themselves of rare problem bears.
My wife and I went to Tofino (on Vancouver) this last summer where you can rent a boat for a tour of the coastal black bears. Very highly recommend it.
(As a local) it sounds weird to say "on Vancouver" without the island part. Vancouver means the city. If you want to sound cool you can say "the Island".
Super cool! I love Vancouver island - normally visit Campbell River where I used to have family. Always wanted to make it to the west side for Tofino or the West Coast Trail.
If they swam there, no. Invasive species have to be introduced by humans, by definition! The effect of grizzlies on the island ecosystem is unknown, and that may be more of what you're talking about.
> If they swam there, no. Invasive species have to be introduced by humans, by definition!
So what do you call it if humans introduce a species to an island A that's really close to another island B — and then the species happens to make the short hop to island B on its own? In a causal sense, that species would not have made it to island B if not for us introducing it to island A.
An introduced species, alien species, exotic species, adventive species, immigrant species, foreign species, non-indigenous species, or non-native species is a species living outside its native distributional range, but which has arrived there by human activity, directly or indirectly, and either deliberately or accidentally.
Not. Grizzlies aren't invasive here. A species is invasive basically if:
1) has been introduced directly or indirectly by man actions (a mosquito carried on a plane, a lost exotic pet). If arrived by its own means is not invasive.
2) is not a previous part of that ecosystem so it didn't evolved here; There are exceptions to this rule [1][2]
3) is reproducing in the new area (often explosively by lack of predators and diseases), also with some exceptions [3]; and
4) Will modify the ecosystem substantially (displacing or wiping other species in the process).
Wolves on Yellowstone fulfill all points except 2. They aren't invasive. Apples on America don't fulfill points 2 and 4 so they are more healers than destroyers, and reproduce but not exponentially.
------------
[1] Can be ignored when the new species fill a niche from an extinct one, "Healing" the ecosystem. Gray wolves proven to be solid healers for example. Turkeys on Mauritius island could be the only birds able to spread the seeds of some trees unable to reproduce since Dodo went extinct. In this case we can do an exception to save dozens of native species from going extinct.
[2] Creating deliberately a sanctuary of a non native species to reduce the risk of being extinct in their own place, is also allowed.
[3] neutered domestic cats, gone feral, are invasive, because there is still a constant supply from other areas.
By that definition, horses that were introduced to North America by humans in 16th century are not invasive because they existed in North America 10,000 years ago.
So they fill a niche in a place that evolved with extinct horses and can sustain another species of horse. If they pass a threshold where they drink all the water for example (desert pools on Australia with endemic desert fishes), they became invasive and must go.
They will need to watch very carefully for any negative relationship with the endemic Vancouver Island Marmot, that only lives in a couple spots in the Island. In this case, those bears will need to be captured and moved out of the Island again. Grizzlies have the rest of N America to live.
Yes, They are much more strong and need more meat to survive. Being able or not to lift a heavy rock can be the difference between an entire colony of marmots wiped or not. With such small populations of gregarious animals, losing 10 or 20 marmots by three bears in a couple of nights is a serious issue. Is close to the number of survivors in the wild before the rewilding projects started.
Black bears must have some effect on marmots. Both species compete for the food, but the effect can be difficult to study (Black bears eat lots of ants for example, and ants eat surprisingly big amounts of plants also). Ecology is so complex that must be managed by trained professionals, able to see the whole picture, not for companies driven toward selling more newspapers (In the same way as computer security, hospitals, or any other issue important to us; that would cause disasters if not addressed sensibly).
The marmots are in so few locations and in such small numbers, it seems exceedingly unlikely that it would become an issue. It would be awful if it was a problem though. The marmots have been having record years, and their recovery is really just beginning.
1) Grizzlies are known to ear marmots if they can catch them. Those bears are able to move big stones. One bear that would specialize on open the tunnels and chase the rodents on their nests, could trigger the demise of the wild population in months or weeks. Even before we could notice it.
2) Bears will compete for the same fruits and resources in autumn and have big appetites. Marmots need those fruits to survive winter.
3) Vancouver Marmot societies can collapse suddenly if the number is reduced, because they need a minimum number of watchers for protection while the other eat.
The risk simply doesn't worth it at this moment. Professional advice should be relocation of the bears until the marmot situation improves and creates a minimum number of individuals that would act as a safety buffer. Those bears at least should be radiotracked ASAP and followed by Biologists and specialized workers. That would be the minimum action required. If they enter on the area with marmots they must go. Prioritizing safety of the critically endangered animals over the common species is the correct decision.
I agree they should be tracked, absolutely. I should have specified that I wouldn’t expect it to be an issue in the short term. Eventually they would almost certainly interact, though at that point hopefully the marmots will be established with stable populations.
I also agree that prioritizing endangered species is the right decision here. We have more than enough bears on the island. We don’t really need to ensure grizzlies stay in the mix at the moment, haha.
I have kinda mixed feelings on this. Protecting an endangered species against human hunting, habitat reduction, or other unnatural dangers makes total sense.
But what's unnatural about grizzlies? Were they introduced onto the island by man? Nope. For that matter, the bears on Kodiak -- how did they get there in the first place? They have plenty of salmon so they probably don't need to eat marmots, if there are any. But maybe they wiped out other species we don't know about.
What are you going to do to protect them against other natural predators? And why not introduce them into other suitable habitats, like we've done with wolves in the US? Then we wouldn't be so dependent on one island.
Edit: this is in marked contrast to New Zealand trying to eliminate the stoats and other introduced mammals who are not native and are wiping out the bird species who are. The bears got there on their own.
The article says "As the first known female grizzly on Vancouver Island, she could be the progenitor of an entirely new, self-sustaining grizzly population—the first in as many as 12,500 years".
They might be waiting for a long time for other bears to come
The authorities could always bring over some other ones, if that's really what they want.
In any case, the drive to mate is pretty powerful. I would think a female in heat would swim back to the mainland if that was the only way to find a male.
'On Vancouver Island—about 10 times closer to the mainland—the genetic diversity of any future grizzly population shouldn’t be a problem. As we’ve seen, “there’ll be males coming over to mix up the genes,” McLellan says. And now, perhaps, the odd female too."'
Vancouver Island is beautiful. If only the people's personalities were just as beautiful as the nature, but stuff may have changed since the mid-2000s.
That said, Richmond was worse.
Is the antique car and hot rod show still a thing in Comox?
I've been up REAL close to grizzlies, on Kodiak Island [1]. However, that has a population of 13,000 [2], whereas Vancouver has 840,000, according to that article.
That means on Kodiak, the bears have the land mostly to themselves, and humans aren't much of a threat to them. You wouldn't try this in Yellowstone, where fatal bear-human encounters happen regularly. And probably will on Vancouver, too.
It’s important to distinguish “Vancouver” (a city on the mainland) and “Vancouver Island” (an island off the coast).
Vancouver Island has a population nearing a million, but half of it live in the greater Victoria area, which occupies a tiny little peninsula and change on the southern tip. Most of the island - which is huge, approximately four times the size of Kodiak Island, for what it’s worth - is pretty wild and untamed.
I'm sure, but the question is, do the populations intersect? Looking at the map, I see three Provincial Parks up in the north, plus towns and roads. That will mean vacationers will encounter them.
Whereas on Kodiak, there is nothing on one side of the island.
I think it's time that we start to make room once again for the animals we almost drove to extinction. This would be a good, controlled setting to see if we can do this responsibly.
For good reason. Brown bears eat people. You are no more than a slow meal to them. Coexistence means accepting that people will be eaten by bears or bears will be killed by people defending themselves. I think it is worth noting that native tribes prepared for war if the needed to kill a brown bear.
Says somebody that has never lived where brown bears do. They can and will gladly eat you if you are the best meal around. Salmon are only around for maybe 1/4 of the year.
Might make for an interesting development on future seasons of Alone if Grizzles become a common presence on Vancouver Island.
My understanding of read materials so far is the amount of work gone into the program to risk profile danger was incredible, the change in risk profile of the addition of Grizzles on top of wolves and black bears would be quite an adjustment.
They have done at least one season in Interior BC where Grizzlies are present. They have also done seasons in northern Canada where within range of those predators as well.
My Yukon buddy was the safety officer/local guy when they did alone up on great slave lake in the NWT.( near Yellowknife)
He hung around all the time with his hunting rifle and a 12 gauge loaded with slugs to make sure nobody got eaten.
He got in trouble for sharing smokes and giving fire to the contestants a few times.
Apparently the great slave lake was named after the indigenous dene people, who were called the slave tribe by their enemy tribe the Cree.
The specific location was kept out of publications for a while but unfortunately the cat is now out of the bag. It looks like an earlier story from near the end of August also divulged that info. Hopefully they are given space next year but there is a real risk that many people will now drive to that spot for a sighting. It was quite impressive that the location was kept out of publications for as long as it was but eventually someone had to ruin that.
> It’s also possible that people perceived grizzlies as more threatening and drove them away from food sources, perhaps even killing them.
Kinda funny that this is framed as a less likely theory.
If it was somewhat uncommon for bears to swim across the strait and there weren’t too many, I think it’s enormously likely that First Nations would have actively seeked to rid themselves of rare problem bears.
My wife and I went to Tofino (on Vancouver) this last summer where you can rent a boat for a tour of the coastal black bears. Very highly recommend it.
(As a local) it sounds weird to say "on Vancouver" without the island part. Vancouver means the city. If you want to sound cool you can say "the Island".
Super cool! I love Vancouver island - normally visit Campbell River where I used to have family. Always wanted to make it to the west side for Tofino or the West Coast Trail.
I hope you made a stop in Hot Springs Cove.
That place is magical.
Note that Vancouver Island has absurd numbers of black bear but pretty much or at zero brown bears until now.
I'm wondering if they're u. a. stikeenensis, gyas, dalli, or merely the terribly-named horribilis.
So are these Grizzlies now an "invasive species" on Vancouver Island?
Explain why or why not you think so!
If they swam there, no. Invasive species have to be introduced by humans, by definition! The effect of grizzlies on the island ecosystem is unknown, and that may be more of what you're talking about.
> If they swam there, no. Invasive species have to be introduced by humans, by definition!
So what do you call it if humans introduce a species to an island A that's really close to another island B — and then the species happens to make the short hop to island B on its own? In a causal sense, that species would not have made it to island B if not for us introducing it to island A.
Yes, when an invasive species spreads from where it was first introduced, it remains an invasive species.
By what definition? Humans being involved didn't seem common in definitions I found.
An invasive species is an introduced species that harms its new environment.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_species
An introduced species, alien species, exotic species, adventive species, immigrant species, foreign species, non-indigenous species, or non-native species is a species living outside its native distributional range, but which has arrived there by human activity, directly or indirectly, and either deliberately or accidentally.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduced_species
Not. Grizzlies aren't invasive here. A species is invasive basically if:
1) has been introduced directly or indirectly by man actions (a mosquito carried on a plane, a lost exotic pet). If arrived by its own means is not invasive.
2) is not a previous part of that ecosystem so it didn't evolved here; There are exceptions to this rule [1][2]
3) is reproducing in the new area (often explosively by lack of predators and diseases), also with some exceptions [3]; and
4) Will modify the ecosystem substantially (displacing or wiping other species in the process).
Wolves on Yellowstone fulfill all points except 2. They aren't invasive. Apples on America don't fulfill points 2 and 4 so they are more healers than destroyers, and reproduce but not exponentially.
------------
[1] Can be ignored when the new species fill a niche from an extinct one, "Healing" the ecosystem. Gray wolves proven to be solid healers for example. Turkeys on Mauritius island could be the only birds able to spread the seeds of some trees unable to reproduce since Dodo went extinct. In this case we can do an exception to save dozens of native species from going extinct.
[2] Creating deliberately a sanctuary of a non native species to reduce the risk of being extinct in their own place, is also allowed.
[3] neutered domestic cats, gone feral, are invasive, because there is still a constant supply from other areas.
The article says that grizzlies did use to exist on the island, so they’d not be invasive
By that definition, horses that were introduced to North America by humans in 16th century are not invasive because they existed in North America 10,000 years ago.
So they fill a niche in a place that evolved with extinct horses and can sustain another species of horse. If they pass a threshold where they drink all the water for example (desert pools on Australia with endemic desert fishes), they became invasive and must go.
They will need to watch very carefully for any negative relationship with the endemic Vancouver Island Marmot, that only lives in a couple spots in the Island. In this case, those bears will need to be captured and moved out of the Island again. Grizzlies have the rest of N America to live.
Are a few brown bears more dangerous to marmots than the many black bears that already live there?
Yes, They are much more strong and need more meat to survive. Being able or not to lift a heavy rock can be the difference between an entire colony of marmots wiped or not. With such small populations of gregarious animals, losing 10 or 20 marmots by three bears in a couple of nights is a serious issue. Is close to the number of survivors in the wild before the rewilding projects started.
Black bears must have some effect on marmots. Both species compete for the food, but the effect can be difficult to study (Black bears eat lots of ants for example, and ants eat surprisingly big amounts of plants also). Ecology is so complex that must be managed by trained professionals, able to see the whole picture, not for companies driven toward selling more newspapers (In the same way as computer security, hospitals, or any other issue important to us; that would cause disasters if not addressed sensibly).
The marmots are in so few locations and in such small numbers, it seems exceedingly unlikely that it would become an issue. It would be awful if it was a problem though. The marmots have been having record years, and their recovery is really just beginning.
1) Grizzlies are known to ear marmots if they can catch them. Those bears are able to move big stones. One bear that would specialize on open the tunnels and chase the rodents on their nests, could trigger the demise of the wild population in months or weeks. Even before we could notice it.
2) Bears will compete for the same fruits and resources in autumn and have big appetites. Marmots need those fruits to survive winter.
3) Vancouver Marmot societies can collapse suddenly if the number is reduced, because they need a minimum number of watchers for protection while the other eat.
The risk simply doesn't worth it at this moment. Professional advice should be relocation of the bears until the marmot situation improves and creates a minimum number of individuals that would act as a safety buffer. Those bears at least should be radiotracked ASAP and followed by Biologists and specialized workers. That would be the minimum action required. If they enter on the area with marmots they must go. Prioritizing safety of the critically endangered animals over the common species is the correct decision.
I agree they should be tracked, absolutely. I should have specified that I wouldn’t expect it to be an issue in the short term. Eventually they would almost certainly interact, though at that point hopefully the marmots will be established with stable populations.
I also agree that prioritizing endangered species is the right decision here. We have more than enough bears on the island. We don’t really need to ensure grizzlies stay in the mix at the moment, haha.
I have kinda mixed feelings on this. Protecting an endangered species against human hunting, habitat reduction, or other unnatural dangers makes total sense.
But what's unnatural about grizzlies? Were they introduced onto the island by man? Nope. For that matter, the bears on Kodiak -- how did they get there in the first place? They have plenty of salmon so they probably don't need to eat marmots, if there are any. But maybe they wiped out other species we don't know about.
What are you going to do to protect them against other natural predators? And why not introduce them into other suitable habitats, like we've done with wolves in the US? Then we wouldn't be so dependent on one island.
Edit: this is in marked contrast to New Zealand trying to eliminate the stoats and other introduced mammals who are not native and are wiping out the bird species who are. The bears got there on their own.
How would they avoid inbreeding and genetic mutations if only a single bloodline existed there?
Inbreeding tends to solve itself in cases of problems. If the offspring aren't viable, they'll die.
I think the grizzlies will take care of that on their own. Either some bears from the island will swim to the mainland, or vice versa.
Note: don't ask for a link on that. I just suspect animals prefer not to mate with their siblings.
The article says "As the first known female grizzly on Vancouver Island, she could be the progenitor of an entirely new, self-sustaining grizzly population—the first in as many as 12,500 years".
They might be waiting for a long time for other bears to come
The authorities could always bring over some other ones, if that's really what they want.
In any case, the drive to mate is pretty powerful. I would think a female in heat would swim back to the mainland if that was the only way to find a male.
From the article:
'On Vancouver Island—about 10 times closer to the mainland—the genetic diversity of any future grizzly population shouldn’t be a problem. As we’ve seen, “there’ll be males coming over to mix up the genes,” McLellan says. And now, perhaps, the odd female too."'
Ofc it's Sayward /s
Vancouver Island is beautiful. If only the people's personalities were just as beautiful as the nature, but stuff may have changed since the mid-2000s.
That said, Richmond was worse.
Is the antique car and hot rod show still a thing in Comox?
> If only the people's personalities were just as beautiful as the nature,
Matthew 7:3
> Is the antique car and hot rod show still a thing in Comox?
Looks like it is: https://crownisle.com/event/hot-august-nights-classic-car-sh...
I've been up REAL close to grizzlies, on Kodiak Island [1]. However, that has a population of 13,000 [2], whereas Vancouver has 840,000, according to that article.
That means on Kodiak, the bears have the land mostly to themselves, and humans aren't much of a threat to them. You wouldn't try this in Yellowstone, where fatal bear-human encounters happen regularly. And probably will on Vancouver, too.
[1] https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/travel-disasters
[2] https://usafacts.org/data/topics/people-society/population-a...
It’s important to distinguish “Vancouver” (a city on the mainland) and “Vancouver Island” (an island off the coast).
Vancouver Island has a population nearing a million, but half of it live in the greater Victoria area, which occupies a tiny little peninsula and change on the southern tip. Most of the island - which is huge, approximately four times the size of Kodiak Island, for what it’s worth - is pretty wild and untamed.
I'm sure, but the question is, do the populations intersect? Looking at the map, I see three Provincial Parks up in the north, plus towns and roads. That will mean vacationers will encounter them.
Whereas on Kodiak, there is nothing on one side of the island.
I think it's time that we start to make room once again for the animals we almost drove to extinction. This would be a good, controlled setting to see if we can do this responsibly.
For good reason. Brown bears eat people. You are no more than a slow meal to them. Coexistence means accepting that people will be eaten by bears or bears will be killed by people defending themselves. I think it is worth noting that native tribes prepared for war if the needed to kill a brown bear.
> Attacks on humans, though widely reported, are generally rare.
Brown bears prefer salmon to geezers who talk big, for certain.
Says somebody that has never lived where brown bears do. They can and will gladly eat you if you are the best meal around. Salmon are only around for maybe 1/4 of the year.
How is Vancouver "controlled"? The grizzlies can obviously swim back to the mainland if they don't like it.
> we almost drove to extinction
In the Lower 48, yes. Not in Canada and Alaska.
Some of them can, if they are in good physical condition. There's a reason why there haven't been any females who swam across until now.
I think Vancouver is the best city in North America.
This is about Vancouver Island, which is NOT where Vancouver City is located.