Mapping commercial trophy hunting tenures in the Great Bear Rainforest
Our new map shows where we have permanently protected wildlife in the Great Bear Rainforest.
We are currently raising funds to purchase the Southern Great Bear Rainforest tenure, which would effectively provide protection from commercial trophy hunting to over 60 species in an area of 18,239 km2. The Southern Tenure covers over a quarter of the Great Bear Rainforest.
BC’s tenure system was set up in the mid 1900s to manage commercial trophy hunting. The principle was that if a hunter from outside of BC wished to go trophy hunting in the province, they were required to hire, and be accompanied by, a BC guide. The tenure conferred exclusive rights to guide foreigners, and non-BC residents of Canada, to kill 61 species within these (often very large) specified areas or territories. This allocation of wildlife was intended to support BC businesses.
Now, these tenures are extremely valuable as trophy hunting opportunities, particularly for large carnivores, become rarer and therefore more expensive. Foreign hunters are willing to pay upwards of $35,000 to kill black bears, wolves, cougars, and other carnivores, and more than $10,000 for ungulates like mountain goats, bighorn sheep, and moose.
The strategy to purchase tenures was born in 2005, subsequent to the grizzly bear hunting ban that we fought for over several years having been both implemented and then overturned in 2001 after being in effect for one spring hunting season. Given that the political landscape offered little hope for stopping trophy hunting of large carnivores, we pioneered a new approach to permanently saving bears and wolves.
The provincial government banned grizzly bear hunting in 2017, but trophy hunting for all other large carnivore species including wolves, black bears, cougars, and wolverines is still allowed. Since 2005, we have purchased five tenures covering approximately 39,000 km2 of the Great Bear Rainforest. Our goal is to permanently end commercial trophy hunting of all large carnivores in the Great Bear Rainforest.
View the StoryMap version of this map.
Citation
Brooke Gerle. 2023. Safeguarding Coastal Carnivores in the Southern Great Bear Rainforest. [web map]. Sidney (BC): Raincoast Conservation Foundation. www.raincoast.org/2023/06/mapping-commercial-trophy-hunting-tenures-great-bear-rainforest/
About the map
This map displays the commercial trophy hunting tenures within the Great Bear Rainforest. Of these tenures, Raincoast with our Coastal First Nations partners, has purchased five tenures: Raincoast, Spirit Bear, Kliniklini, Nadeea, and Kitlope. We are currently raising funds to purchase the 18,239 km2 Southern Great Bear Rainforest tenure. A layer including all of the guide outfitter tenures in British Columbia is also included on this map.
Using the map
The layers/legend widget provides a list of layers included on this map as well as the option to turn each layer on and off. The other widgets found on this map allow you to zoom in and out, zoom to your current location, expand the map to full screen, search for an address or place, and change the basemap. Clicking on a tenure within the Great Bear Rainforest will provide information about the tenure.
References and sources
Fish and Wildlife. 2014. Guide Outfitter Areas. Distributed by B.C. Data Catalogue [Cited 2023 June] from https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/dataset/44ff66e7-f9b6-4703-a18b-2cff40444b28. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada.
Resource Stewardship Branch. 2008. Strategic Land and Resource Plans – Current. Distributed by B.C. Data Catalogue [Cited 2023 June] from https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/dataset/4b142d4c-83d6-4ecc-b66c-66601ae65992. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Jessica Flinn for the time and effort put into laying the groundwork for this project. Thank you to Brian Falconer, Raincoast’s Guide Outfitter Coordinator, for guidance on delineating tenure boundaries and the work he has put into securing these tenures and protecting wildlife over the years.
Copyright
Please feel welcome to embed, share, and remix this information, as long as you provide proper attribution, and with the exception for the layers that have their own licenses. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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