Bear tourism instead of bear hunting
Our Safeguarding Coastal Carnivores campaign was profiled on BBC.
Safeguarding Coastal Carnivores, our longest running campaign to date, is our initiative to stop all commercial trophy hunting in the Great Bear Rainforest. We are doing this by purchasing commercial hunting tenures. Through the acquisition of these tenures, we own the commercial hunting rights in perpetuity, thus protecting all coastal carnivores that would be, otherwise, subject to trophy hunting.
To date, we’ve purchased the commercial hunting rights in five tenures, more than 38,000 km2 of the BC coast – an area larger than Vancouver Island or the entire country of Belgium. It’s our creative way to circumvent the vagaries of political objectives and protect wildlife. Purchasing these tenures is one small part in the process of supporting First Nations stewardship in the Great Bear Rainforest. Our tenure acquisitions also support ecotourism in the Great Bear Rainforest, of which wildlife viewing is a critical component.
We are currently raising funds to purchase the Southern Great Bear Rainforest tenure and have already raised 50% of our goal!
From Our Own Correspondent podcast
Mark Stratton, a writer with the BBC, reached out to Raincoast, with interest in visiting the Great Bear Rainforest, to see first hand what impact our campaign has. We introduced him to various eco-tourism operators and First Nations leaders.
Part of the story was featured on From Our Own Correspondent, a BBC podcast.
Listen to the full podcast on Apple Podcasts or on the BBC website.
“We have songs and dances about bears. They’re part of our clan system. The fact hunters could come here to our ancestral lands and shoot them for sport is not something our culture aligns with.”
Doug (Muq’vas Glaw) Neasloss, Chief Councillor of the Kitasoo/Xai’xais Nation.
“It’s not about conflict or culture wars, more about matching willing buyers to willing sellers. The owner of the tenure we are raising funds for right now came to us saying he no longer enjoyed taking out hunters. And he asked us to buy him out.”
Brian Falconer, Safeguarding Coastal Carnivores Campaign Director
About the podcast
Insight, wit and analysis as BBC correspondents, journalists and writers take a closer look at the stories behind the headlines. Presented by Kate Adie and Pascale Harter.
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.
