A northern fulmar rests in Hecate Strait.

Seaside Times March 2010

By Chris Genovali, Executive Director, Raincoast Conservation Foundation

I was on my back on the aft deck of the research vessel.  My repose was involuntary as we plied the lumpy waters of Haida Gwaii’s west coast.  Not one prone to sea-sickness, I nevertheless felt like my head was virtually nailed down, a result of the interminable chop.

I had no option but to look skyward and there, to my amazement, were albatrosses, escorting us like some squawking air squadron.  For me, the albatross is the grizzly bear of marine birds in terms of its iconicity and, with a wingspan of over seven feet long, commanding physical presence.  After experiencing the exhilaration of seeing the largest marine bird on the coast

of British Columbia, subsequently reflected on the litany of human-caused hazards facing these majestic pelagics and other marine-bird species.

Marine birds are abundant, diverse and highly mobile predators and scavengers of the seas. For these and other reasons, marine birds are often used as indicators of ecosystem health and ecosystem change.

Raincoast has been working to fill basic knowledge gaps regarding seasonal and inter-annual marine bird distribution, density and seasonal shifts in community assemblages in the waters adjacent to the region known as the Great Bear Rainforest.  By repeatedly surveying marine waters, from Dixon Entrance to Queen Charlotte Strait and neighboring mainland inlets, Raincoast has documented over 70 species and amassed nearly 20,000 sightings of over 100,000 individual marine and other coastal birds.

Raincoast scientists continue to seek to identify areas important for marine birds and examine the potential for conflict with increasing industrial activity, like oil-tanker traffic.

Birds are generally the most abundant and conspicuous victims of oil-tanker accidents. Caroline Fox, Raincoast marine bird biologist and University of Victoria PhD student, states that previous scientific reviews indicate that “oil can affect birds in different ways, including plumage and egg oiling,ingestion, and indirectly though ecosystem changes.  It’s thought that the primary cause of mortality and stress in oiled birds is fouled plumage,which often results in hypothermia and increased metabolic rates.  Ingestion of relatively small amounts may cause a number of physiological changes or even death.”

Did You Know?

Standing out among the many birds observed by Raincoast was the exceedingly rare sighting of a lone, immature short-tailed albatross in the waters southeast of Haida Gwaii. Once numbering in the millions, this species was decimated by the demand for feathers and at one time was thought extinct.

The ocean water was absolutely freezing as I plunged through the surface feet first. The intense cold was primarily due to the fact that I was wearing a partial wetsuit. It was all that was left on board, but there was no way I was going to miss out on a chance to snorkel with the pod of Pacific white-sided dolphins that had been following our boat.

We were sailing across Johnstone Straight, headed for Bond Sound on B.C.’s central coast where we would eventually set up a Raincoast research camp. Even though we were on a tight schedule we could not resist stopping to spend some quality time with these amazing dolphins.

After I got over the initial shock of immersing myself in the bone chilling water, it was easy to ignore the cold being in such close proximity to Pacific white-sided dolphins. Beneath the surface, I was stunned at the size, speed and agility of these creatures.

Dolphin after dolphin would swim straight up to me at significant speed, only to suddenly avert my outstretched hands in what had clearly become a game of underwater tag. They seemed to revel in coming as close as they could before quickly maneuvering away in order to dodge my touch. I soon became aware that I was simply a source of amusement for the dolphins – a role I embraced with no shame!

Pacific white-sided dolphins are one of the species Raincoast has been surveying as part of a research project to help identify important areas for marine mammals on the central and north coasts. We will soon be publishing the results of this initiative. The findings are the result of six years of at-sea systematic surveys with a team of scientists aboard our research vessel Achiever. To date, Raincoast has surveyed over 14,000 kilometres of
ocean and recorded over 2,300 sightings of marine mammals.

Did You Know?

Dolphins have been declared the world’s second most intelligent creatures after humans, with scientists suggesting they are so bright that they should be treated as “non-human persons.”

Studies into dolphin behaviour have highlighted how similar their communications are to those of humans.

In the entire North Pacific, there are an estimated 900,000 Pacific white-sided dolphins. In B.C., Pacific white-sided dolphins are usually encountered in groups of 10 – 100 animals, although some groups have been seen with 2,000 or more individuals.

MacLeans Magazine, February, 2010
by Rachel Mendleson

As a general rule, it’s tough to get the public engaged in science. Which is why Victoria-based environmental researcher Chris Darimont says he’s “thrilled” about the attention his findings on the evolutionary impacts of hunting and fishing have garnered. His paper, which shows how the targeting of large animals has prompted species to get smaller and breed earlier, was just named one of Discover Magazine’s Top 100 Science Stories of 2009. “I know that it’s infiltrating the world of managers,” says Darimont. “And that, for a conservation scientist, is really important.”

In a sense, his findings were always destined for the mainstream. According to Darimont, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and research scientist with the Raincoast Conservation Society, the study gives credence to oft-told anecdotes about how, in generations past, animals were much larger. Based on the meta-analysis of 34 studies, Darimont found that humans have caused swift evolutionary change in species ranging from big horn sheep to Atlantic cod. On average, he says, in the past three decades, body mass has decreased by 20 per cent and reproductive age by 25 per cent.

Though we tend to think of our role in the ecosystem in more civilized terms, in reality, says Darimont, we are predators, “and every predator can have an evolutionary impact on its prey.” Unlike other predators, who typically target the “newly born or nearly dead,” says Darimont, humans go after “large, reproductive-aged adults.” At the same time, regulations often require animals under a certain size be spared, which, says Darimont, “promotes these evolutionary changes.”

With the exception of emails from “a few angry trophy hunters,” Darimont says the feedback he’s received has been overwhelmingly positive. His hope, he says, is that the findings influence policymakers—and us—to rethink how fish and animals are hunted. “It’s not good enough just to do good science,” he says. “It’s got to be injected into the real world, so that changes can be made.”

From near and far Raincoast needs runners for the 2010 Royal Victoria Marathon.  October is a beautiful time of year to run the waterfront streets of Victoria in this qualifier for the Boston marathon.  And… what a great reason to run!  Raincoast is an official charity of RVM’s charity pledge program.   Date: 10.10.10

Email: marathon@raincoast.org

A new decade has dawned and in a few months yet another year of grizzly bear hunting will commence in British Columbia.

The B.C. grizzly bear hunt has been a source of unrelenting controversy. Both sides are stuck in an expert-driven argument in which both camps claim science supports their positions.

It is time that the debate was conducted within the context of ethical considerations, as the present conflict will likely never transcend the deeply entrenched inflexible stances.

In his paper, Environmental Ethics and Trophy Hunting, Alastair Gunn states that “Nowhere in the (scientific) literature, so far as I am aware, is hunting for fun, for the enjoyment of killing, or for the acquisition of trophies defended.”

Many who are outspoken advocates of grizzly hunting do not recognize, or choose not to recognize, that it is a moral matter. They feign that hunting grizzlies is amoral when, in fact, it is not.

They pretend the trivial value of hunting grizzlies somehow outweighs the much greater harm done to the bears.

In Ethics and the Environment, Dale Jamieson writes of the problematic nature of deciding to “choose amoralism and opt out of morality. The very ties that bind us to a society entangle us in a morality. Morality is ubiquitous; amoralists are rare.”

The compulsion to kill these intelligent, powerful and beautiful animals in order to “bag a trophy,” as opposed to simply observing and fully experiencing an encounter of two inextricably linked species, is something poll after poll has shown the average British Columbian cannot fathom.

Doug and Andrea Peacock address the human-bear connection in their book The Essential Grizzly:

“The concurrent colonization of North America by brown bears and humans is a remarkable story. Both men and grizzlies . . . lived together for thousands of years, and perhaps travelled the same route south to the continental United States. Genetic evidence indicates a single invasion for both grizzlies and humans . . . ”

Grizzly bears are primarily shot and killed for gratuitous reasons. They are targeted by trophy hunters and guide outfitters for entertainment or for profit, with approval by government authorities who sanction this activity as a legitimate management tool.

Michael Nelson and Kelly Millenbah have stated in their recent paper The Ethics of Hunting that “To the degree the wildlife community begins to take philosophy and ethics more seriously, both as a realm of expertise that can be acquired and as a critical dimension of wildlife conservation, many elements of wildlife conservation and management would look different.”

Imagine a scenario in which wildlife managers and the politicians they must answer to were required to incorporate ethical considerations into the decision-making process for the grizzly hunt.

The debate would no longer be limited to metrics such as population estimates, kill quotas, harvest-able surpluses and other strictly mechanistic arguments which lend themselves to endless stalemates.

According to Paul Paquet, a former member of the B.C. government’s grizzly bear scientific panel, the fact that we can hunt grizzly bears does not mean that we ought to hunt them.

Further, while science provides information, it does not give us permission to do things. In other words, the statistics that have been generated ostensibly to inform, but in actual practice to justify, the trophy hunting of grizzlies do not contain an intrinsic approval to do so.

Unfortunately, B.C. is saddled with a policy framework for wildlife conservation and management in which ethical considerations simply do not exist.

Large carnivores, in particular grizzly bears, pose a threat not so much to human “life and property” rather to human self-conceptualization. They challenge our imagined “rightful place” in the world, primarily our hegemony over nature and its non-human inhabitants.

It is this mindset that blocks us from extending ethical considerations to grizzlies, for instance, both in the way we govern our society’s interactions with such animals and in how we wield power over bears given our technologically based supremacy (high-powered hunting rifles, jet boats, helicopters).

To evolve B.C.’s relationship with large carnivores, we could start by placing greater emphasis on examining the ethics and morality of the very concept of hunting for recreation and entertainment, as opposed to elevating trivial values like trophy hunting grizzlies above the welfare of the bears themselves.

— Chris Genovali is the executive director of Raincoast Conservation.

By Chris Genovali, Special to the Victoria  Times Colonist,
January 21, 2010

A new decade has dawned and in a few months yet another year of grizzly bear hunting will commence in British Columbia.  The B.C. grizzly bear hunt has been a source of unrelenting controversy. Both sides are stuck in a continual expert-driven argument in which both camps claim science supports their positions.

It is time that the debate was conducted within the context of ethical considerations, as the present conflict will likely never transcend the deeply entrenched inflexible stances.

In his paper, Environmental Ethics and Trophy Hunting, Alastair Gunn states that “Nowhere in the [scientific] literature, so far as I am aware, is hunting for fun, for the enjoyment of killing, or for the acquisition of trophies defended.”

Many who are outspoken advocates of grizzly hunting do not recognize, or choose not to recognize, that it is a moral matter. They feign that hunting grizzlies is amoral when, in fact, it is not. They pretend the trivial value of hunting grizzlies somehow outweighs the much greater harm done to the bears.

In Ethics and the Environment, Dale Jamieson writes of the problematic nature of deciding to “choose amoralism and opt out of morality. The very ties that bind us to a society entangle us in a morality. Morality is ubiquitous; amoralists are rare.”

The compulsion to kill these intelligent, powerful and beautiful animals in order to “bag a trophy,” as opposed to simply observing and fully experiencing an encounter of two inextricably linked species, is something poll after poll has shown the average British Columbian cannot fathom.

Doug and Andrea Peacock address the human-bear connection in their book The Essential Grizzly:

“The concurrent colonization of North America by brown bears and humans is a remarkable story. Both men and grizzlies … lived together for thousands of years, and perhaps travelled the same route south to the continental United States. Genetic evidence indicates a single invasion for both grizzlies and humans….”

Grizzly bears are primarily shot and killed for gratuitous reasons. They are targeted by trophy hunters and guide outfitters for entertainment or for profit, with approval by government authorities who sanction this activity as a legitimate management tool.

Michael Nelson and Kelly Millenbah have stated in their recent paper The Ethics of Hunting that “To the degree the wildlife community begins to take philosophy and ethics more seriously, both as a realm of expertise that can be acquired and as a critical dimension of wildlife conservation, many elements of wildlife conservation and management would look different.”

Imagine a scenario in which wildlife managers and the politicians they must answer to were required to incorporate ethical considerations into the decision-making process for the grizzly hunt.

The debate would no longer be limited to metrics such as population estimates, kill quotas, harvestable surpluses and other strictly mechanistic arguments which lend themselves to endless stalemates.

According to Paul Paquet, a former member of the B.C. government’s grizzly bear scientific panel, the fact that we can hunt grizzly bears does not mean that we ought to hunt them.

Further, while science provides information, it does not give us permission to do things. In other words, the statistics that have been generated ostensibly to inform, but in actual practice to justify, the trophy hunting of grizzlies do not contain an intrinsic approval to do so.

Unfortunately, B.C. is saddled with a policy framework for wildlife conservation and management in which ethical considerations simply do not exist.

Large carnivores, in particular grizzly bears, pose a threat not so much to human “life and property,” rather to human self-conceptualization. They challenge our imagined “rightful place” in the world, primarily our hegemony over nature and its non-human inhabitants.

It is this mindset that blocks us from extending ethical considerations to grizzlies, for instance, both in the way we govern our society’s interactions with such animals and in how we wield power over bears given our technologically based supremacy (high-powered hunting rifles, jet boats, helicopters).

To evolve B.C.’s relationship with large carnivores, we could start by placing greater emphasis on examining the ethics and morality of the very concept of hunting for recreation and entertainment, as opposed to elevating trivial values like trophy hunting grizzlies above the welfare of the bears themselves.

Chris Genovali is the executive director of Raincoast Conservation.

Click here access the Discover Magazine Story

Predatory behaviour of humans is causing some species to shrink at an unprecedented rate, says a Victoria research scientist whose study has been deemed one of the top science stories of last year.Chris Darimont, a research scientist with Raincoast Conservation Society and postdoctoral researcher in environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has found fishing and hunting are causing the planet’s most rapid evolutionary changes.

The research paper, first published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has been slotted at No. 30 in Discover Magazine’s Top 100 Science Stories of 2009. The list, which includes only a handful of Canadian stories, is being revealed throughout January on the magazine’s website.

While most predators take smaller and weaker prey, humans target the largest animals — whether salmon or grizzly bears. Combined with large harvests,that means species are getting smaller and breeding earlier, so they can have offspring before they’re large enough to be targeted, Darimont’s study found.

“If you consider things like fishing, this is of huge importance,” Darimont said in an interview.

“It means we are harvesting away our future bounty by causing fish to shrink in size and breed at an earlier age. From a human perspective, we are essentially whittling away future opportunities to have a sustainable industry.”

From the ecosystem perspective, humans taking the biggest and strongest can have ripple effects that reverberate up and down the food chain, he said.

“The public knows we’re taking away too many fish, but the threat goes above and beyond numbers,” he said. Trophy hunters who prize the big horns on bighorn sheep have caused average horn length and body mass to drop by about 20 per cent over 30 years, the researchers discovered.

“We’re changing the very essence of what remains, sometimes within the span of only two decades. In not only an ecological, but also an evolutionary context, we are the planet’s super-predator,” Darimont said.

The research seems to be creating a stir, he said, because it compares humans with other predators, which take juveniles or weaker animals, usually resulting in prey species becoming bigger and stronger.

The findings should be a wakeup call to resource managers, policy makers and commercial harvesting industries, said Darimont, who is hoping the exposure will result in changes in hunting and fishing regulations. “We should be harvesting at far, far lower rates so that, even if we choose the largest,it would have less of an impact,” he said. “And, if we think this is important, we should forego our preference for these trophy specimens.”

Darimont said he is thrilled the paper is attracting so much attention. “At Raincoast, we try to do good science and get that science to reach the public and decision-makers, so this has been a spectacular success,” he said.