Purchasing Commercial Hunting Territories
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 licenses.
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. The threat from trophy hunting also continues through much of the Great Bear Rainforest, even in protected areas.
This is more than just an ecological issue. It is an ethical issue. Hunting these magnificent animals for entertainment and profit is just plain wrong.
Our first territory purchase
Raincoast has a track record with big ideas. Given that the political landscape 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, Raincoast, its First Nations partners and our supporters, purchased an exclusive 25,000 sq km hunting license in 2005 for $1.3 million.
This purchase ended commercial trophy hunting over a huge section of BC’s coast. With grizzlies, wolves, and black bears no longer targets for commercial trophy hunters, we have seen river valleys come alive with bears and wolves in the 10 years since this acquisition. 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.
More hunting territory purchases
In 2012, working with our First Nation partners, Raincoast secured a second hunting license– the primary place where spirit bears (a white coloured black bear), roam. Despite a restriction on killing spirit bears, killing black bears – that carry the recessive gene that causes the white coat – is allowed. In 2016, we secured a third territory in the Upper Klinaklini watershed. In 2018, we secured the Nadeea tenure covering large mainland watersheds near Klemtu. In 2020, we secured the Kitlope tenure in Haisla territory.
Raincoast, and our First Nations partners, have acquired commercial trophy hunting rights in over 35,000 square kilometres of BC’s Great Bear Rainforest. Our long-term goal is to secure the hunting territories in the entire Great Bear Rainforest. We now stand poised to complete the job.
Read about our purchase of commercial hunting territories.
Watch The Price of the Prize, the CBC documentary that describes our work to end the grizzly hunt.
Raincoast’s hunting tenure acquisitions through time
Raincoast’s first hunting territory purchase in 2006
Raincoast’s hunting territory acquisitions as of 2016, acquiring Spirit Bear and Klinikilini tenures
You can help
Raincoast’s in-house scientists, collaborating graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and professors make us unique among conservation groups. We work with First Nations, academic institutions, government, and other NGOs to build support and inform decisions that protect aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, and the wildlife that depend on them. We conduct ethically applied, process-oriented, and hypothesis-driven research that has immediate and relevant utility for conservation deliberations and the collective body of scientific knowledge.
We investigate to understand coastal species and processes. We inform by bringing science to decision-makers and communities. We inspire action to protect wildlife and wildlife habitats.
