while the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) moves forward with a revised conflict mitigation strategy for grizzlies in the alpine, the Alpine Club of Canada's Whistler section is decrying the impact on alpine users.
"The result [of the revised strategy] appears to be to stop planned trail construction and restrict recreating in local areas used by a grizzly bear," wrote Michael Blaxland, chair of ACC Whistler's alpine access subcommittee, in a letter to mayor and council.
"To make such a decision is a display of a lack of balance between the interests of encouraging grizzly bears and the interests of hikers and bikers."
The revised strategy was informed by grizzly expert Grant MacHutchon, who completed a habitat-mapping project with implications for trail management, in the process identifying some key recommendations: that the RMOW not build trails to Gin and Tonic lakes, or Beverley Lake; reconsider the routing for the Flank Trail south, as well as reroutes for the Skywalk and Pot of Gold trails; install additional signs, information and monitoring, and; continue to ban e-bikes and dogs on alpine trails (read more in Pique, April 16: "RMOW goes back to drawing board on grizzly management.")
"We should not be prevented from hiking the Skywalk and the Sproatt/Rainbow areas," Blaxland wrote, noting that RMOW trail counters tallied 6,226 hikers on Skywalk, 4,534 on the Rainbow trails and 7,980 hikers and bikers on the Sproatt trails in 2019.
"Are we to stop because the area is used by grizzly bears?"
In his letter, Blaxland suggested grizzlies be tranquilized and moved "to a valley well away from here," and that the problem could be managed with signage and rules.
"If a grizzly bear is in the area recommend, or mandate, at the trail head, a minimum group size and ban less than three entering the area," he wrote.
"Patrol by helicopter to encourage the bear to move on from the Sproatt/Rainbw/Skywalk/Garibaldi prime recreation areas.
"There is more land in B.C. that is free of humans for the grizzly bears. Do not encourage them to live close to the world famous recreation location where we hike."
The ACC-Whistler did not respond to an interview request before Pique's deadline.
For Johnny Mikes, field director for the Coast to Cascades Grizzly Bear Initiative, the views expressed in the letter elicited "surprise and disappointment."
"I was really disappointed at just the tone of unwillingness to coexist, really," he said.
"It's like somebody would say, 'I'm going to park my car in your driveway; now it's inconvenient, so you start parking your car somewhere else and we'll call that balance."
The term "balance" has been used in relation to B.C. conservation efforts for decades, Mikes said, but what does it actually mean?
"When we look at balance when it comes to wildlife and the province, our wildlife populations are, generally speaking, in terrible shape. They're really, really depressed, and the fact that these grizzly bears to the west of us in the mountains are starting to make a little bit of a comeback ... it's really one of the few bright spots when you look around in terms of the stats of wildlife in B.C.," he said.
"And we should really embrace that and make it work. And besides, what do we want to be known as? 'Hey, it's Whistler, come bike here! And it's OK, we sterilized the landscape for you; we got rid of all our problem wildlife?'"
After reading the letter, Mikes reached out to the ACC-Whistler to offer to arrange a webinar with grizzly experts, which the group accepted.
There's no simple solution to alpine grizzly management as the population continues to recover, "and so that's really why we made the offer," Mikes said.
"If we're going to coexist, it's really important that we're working from the same information."
