Hunting territory purchases

IMAGINE if your conservation investment could go directly to protecting the lives of wild animals, now and forever.

End the trophy hunt by helping us purchase commercial hunting territories.

Threats to bears and wolves

For tomorrow’s children to see wild bears and wolves in coastal British Columbia, bold new conservation efforts are required. Coastal bears face numerous threats to their survival, including habitat loss, a declining supply of salmon, and trophy hunting. While some progress has been made on protecting bear habitat, declines in salmon stocks are likely reducing the number of new cubs. On top of this, the threat from trophy hunting continues through much of the Great Bear Rainforest, even in the new protected areas.

This is more than just an ecological issue. It’s also an ethical issue. Hunting these magnificent animals for entertainment and profit is wrong.

Our past accomplishments

coastal grizzly bear

Raincoast has a track record with big projects and ideas. Understanding the constraints of the political landscape – which offers little hope for stopping trophy hunting – we pioneered a new approach to saving bears and wolves from hunters with high-powered rifles. In an unprecedented move that garnered worldwide attention, we purchased an exclusive 24,700 km2 hunting license in 2005 for $1.3 million. Our purchase ended commercial trophy hunting over this huge region. Grizzlies, wolves, and black bears were no longer targets for commercial trophy hunters throughout much of British Columbia’s central coast. In the seven years since this acquisition, and we have seen river valleys come alive with bears and wolves. The renewed presence of these animals has also spurred commercial wildlife viewing and local business opportunities.

Throughout this vast area, people armed only with cameras can find grizzlies feeding on spring sedges or wolf pups playing in tidal mud flats. The apprehensions of the past – when fears that the next set of watchful eyes were behind a hunting scope – are now gone.

Purchasing the spirit bear hunting territory

In 2012, Raincoast secured a second hunting territory – the primary place in the world where spirit bears (a white coloured black bear) roam. Despite a restriction on killing spirit bears, trophy hunting of black bears – that carry the recessive gene that causes the white coat – is allowed. Our purchase not only protects one of the rarest bears in the world, it safeguards the genetically unique rainforest wolves we have studied for a decade. This new 3,500 km² license lies

next to our existing hunting tenure, providing important connectivity between these refuges.

Purchasing these tenures and ending the commercial trophy hunt would not

have been accomplished without an outpouring of support from individuals, community groups, families, business leaders and others. The success of these initiatives has reinforced our long-term objective to acquire additional commercial hunting rights on the BC coast. Our next accomplishment hinges on this same kind of broad-based support.

Raincoast’s first territory is in green (24,700 km2) and our second is in yellow(3,500 km²⁾. Our ownership of these two territories has ended commercial trophy hunting of bears and wolves in over 27,000 km2 of the BC coast. The estimated size of the tenures includes only land area. We are now pursuing territories to the north and south.