FFWD REW

Erring on the side of ignorance

Or is it fear ruling Alberta’s wildlife rehabilitation program?

For a party that pledges allegiance to the dictum of “small government” the Alberta Tories sure seem inclined to unnecessarily meddle in the lives of Albertans who have committed to give injured and infirm wildlife a second chance at life. Last summer approved facility plans and permits in hand wildlife rehabilitators across the province received in the mail a surprise from Alberta Sustainable Resource Development (SRD): An insidious “appendix” that contradicts their current permits and curtails in a single stroke the types of animals rehabbers routinely care for and release into the wild.

Bats skunks deer mice raccoons toads salamanders and frogs (other than the threatened leopard frog) are to be immediately terminated by the very people who a year ago would have nursed them back to health and set them free. Large mammals such as bears (both black and grizzly the latter a threatened species) bighorn sheep bison bobcats caribou (also threatened) cougars coyotes elk lynx moose mountain goats and wolves are not to be rehabilitated under any circumstances. Instead they are to be turned over to Alberta’s Fish and Wildlife Department within 72 hours presumably for termination with extreme prejudice.

Why this seemingly arbitrary about-face? It’s certainly not money as the provincial government provides no funding for these non-profit facilities that do for wildlife what Florence Nightingale did for wounded soldiers during the Crimean War. SRD Minister Mel Knight concerned that rehabilitated animals pose “serious risks to human safety” because of disease and habituation indicated that SRD prefers to “err on the side of caution for the sake of public safety and wildlife.”

Caution? For wildlife? During more than 20 years of research and writing on wildlife management in Alberta I have yet to see any branch of the Alberta government “err on the side of caution” for wildlife. Although the “precautionary principle” is trotted out time and again by politicians coached to say the right thing at the right time in reality recovery plans the best available science and recommendations from government and independent scientists are routinely ignored to facilitate unsustainable levels of industrial development that errs not on the side of caution but on the side of greed pushing many species at risk (including three on SRD’s new Injured and Orphaned Wildlife Death List) to the very edge of extinction.

That leaves concern for public safety as the only legitimate rationale worth considering so I contacted SRD to take a look at the assessment I assumed the government must have conducted to determine which species posed such danger to the Alberta public that they couldn’t be rehabilitated by licensed experts in state-of-the-art facilities. After all why should it be OK for deer and pronghorn (both abundant) to be rehabilitated at approved facilities but not caribou which are threatened and declining faster than voter turnout in Alberta?

I was particularly curious because up until now wildlife rehabilitators in Alberta have released thousands of animals including many on the new death list without (as far as I am aware) these lucky animals starting epidemics or attacking little old ladies or defenseless children. The award-winning Cochrane Ecological Institute alone has released to the wild more than 8000 injured/orphaned animals since 1971 including now-verboten moose bighorn sheep elk bobcats lynx coyotes 847 endangered swift foxes and countless orphaned black bear cubs.

Next door in British Columbia wildlife rehabilitators are licensed by the provincial government and allowed to rehabilitate and release into the wild everything from voles to grizzly bears. The Northern Lights Wildlife Society for instance has released 148 black and grizzly bears and 48 moose — and not a single one of them have become nuisance animals that pose health or safety risks to humans says owner-operator Angelika Langen. Diseases too are easily managed by trained staff in appropriate facilities.

According to Orphaned Bear Cubs: Rehabilitation and Release Guidelines by Dr. John Beecham an international expert on rehabilitating bears rehabilitation programs have been in place around the world for seven of eight species of bears (including our native black and grizzly bears) since 2006. During the last 30 years several hundred black bears have successfully been released in Canada and the U.S. alone. Beecham writes that the rationale for such release efforts has expanded from the ethical desire to prevent the orphaned or injured from dying a slow death of starvation to include the potential conservation benefits of maintaining small isolated bear populations something Alberta’s grizzly bear population could desperately use. Even China releases captive-bred (panda) bears into the wild to buoy endangered populations.

How did the Alberta government’s rationale stack up against what appears to be a significant and growing body of evidence indicating that rehabilitating wild animals and returning them to the wild is not only ethical it’s also safe and effective? Well in a word: poorly. SRD spokesperson Dave Ealey could not provide me with any written rationale for the decision except to say that government biologists and enforcement staff have “scientific knowledge and experience” that gives them the “necessary credentials to make policy assessments.”

If you’re not overwhelmed with confidence at Ealey’s response neither is Beecham a 29-year veteran with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. The Alberta government has “no scientific rationale for this approach” he told me in a recent email. “The best you can say is that it is a weak rationale for an action that is totally out of date. Apparently they prefer to remain in the 19th century in terms of how they respond to public demand for more responsible wildlife management. This is especially unfortunate given the status of their brown bear populations.”

It’s difficult to know what’s at the root of the Alberta government’s new Injured and Orphaned Wildlife Death Policy. It’s most likely the deadly combination of irrational fear and intractable ideology that seems to guide most of the Tories’ policy-making these days which simply cannot be squared with the rationality of science and experience. The only saving grace for Alberta’s orphaned and injured wildlife is that Knight claims to be “open to new information and will continue to work with the [Alberta Wildlife Rehabilitation] Association for the benefit of wildlife.” So don’t be afraid to grab your pen and pick up the phone to let the minister know what you think about this outdated and indefensible policy.

Jeff Gailus’s The Grizzly Manifesto was shortlisted for the 2010 Alberta Readers’ Choice Award. His upcoming book Little Black Lies is to be published later this year.

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