Hungry grizzly bear coming out of their dens in Alberta's Kananaskis Country are facing a new danger -- the world's most powerful people.
The bears are about to be trapped with leg snares, tranquilized and then fitted with a radio collar before being released.
The aim of the radio collars is so gun-carrying security forces can avoid a deadly encounter while patrolling the woods during the G8 summit next month in Kananaskis.
Some biologists claim the plan is a paranoid overreaction by G8 officials that threatens the health of an endangered predator.
"Somehow, they have twisted things around so that every animal that can bite somebody or pee on a tire requires intensive monitoring," said Brian Horejsi, a consulting wildlife biologist in Calgary who specializes in grizzlies and other large vertebrates.
"It's total nonsense," Mr. Horejsi said.
The federal government has given Alberta Fish and Wildlife an undisclosed amount of money to allow the province to fit about six grizzlies with the collars.
Defenders say the project will net significant scientific data for years to come -- and claim it is being done as much to protect the bears from trigger-happy security personnel as to prevent leaders of the capitalist world from hungry ursines.
"We're really doing this is to protect the bears from the large number of armed people who will be in the backcountry," said Jon Jorgenson, a wildlife biologist for Alberta's Department of Sustainable Resource Development.
"Lots of these [security] people have never encountered bears before," he said. "We don't want any incidents of bears being shot or security people being injured by bears."
In theory, the radio collars will allow biologists to track the bears so they can be chased away if they come too close to any security people or delegates strolling through the woods.
Mr. Jorgenson said Karelian bear dogs -- small, husky-like animals from Finland bred to hunt bears -- will be used to chivvy the grizzlies from areas of human activity.
But only one fatal grizzly mauling has been recorded in Kananaskis in the past 100 years, said Mr. Horejsi. Biologists say the bears rarely act aggressively toward humans.
Past G8 summits -- typically attended by the leaders of the world's eight most heavily industrialized nations -- have erupted with violence when activists protesting world trade policies tangled with police and other security forces.
Providing secret service types with information on the bears' location will prevent panicked shootings that could otherwise result from unexpected encounters, officials say.
"We have a small population of grizzlies here, and whenever you have armed people in the backcountry, you can end up with dead bears," said Mr. Jorgenson. "Human-caused mortality has been identified as a major problem for Kananaskis grizzlies. We want to avoid that during the summit."
Under the plan, the bears will be trapped with leg snares, tranquilized, collared and released. Some bears may also be shot with tranquilizer darts from helicopters.
Mr. Horejsi decried the plan as a "preposterous overreaction that panders to the paranoia" that already hounds grizzlies.
"It's a gross distortion of everything we know about these animals," he said.
Mr. Horejsi said trapping and collaring poses a significant threat to the bears.
"They're just coming out of their dens at this time of the year, so they're hungry, skinny and already under significant stress," he said. "Every time you immobilize and handle a bear you're traumatizing it. It's a tremendous imposition, one that can only be justified if it yields significant data. In my opinion, there have been sufficient studies on Kananaskis Country bears."
Stephan Legault, the executive director of WildCanada.net, a conservation group based in Canmore, Alta., said utmost care must be taken if the collaring proceeds.
"Grizzlies are on Canada's endangered species list," Mr. Legault said. "Historically, 6,000 grizzlies inhabited Alberta. Now they number 800 at the most."
But Bruce Leeson, the director of environmental affairs for Canada's G8 Summit Management Office, said valuable data will result from the collaring project.
"These collars will transmit for years," Mr. Leeson said. "Our department is going to fund the Kananaskis component of [a regional] grizzly study for a full year after the summit. Without our participation, Kananaskis would have been forced to drop out of the study. The monitoring of the collared bears will also fill in some specific data gaps on the recreation area's bears. So this is a win-win situation: We get to know where the bears are during G8, and we're helping with their long- term survival."
Ian Ross, a consulting wildlife biologist from Calgary who will supervise the trapping and collaring of the bears, said he initially was worried about the project's impact on the animals.
"I trap a lot of grizzlies and I was concerned about the stress we could be imposing on these bears," he said. "Since then, I've become convinced that both the federal and provincial governments are committed to long- term monitoring beyond G8. That data will be used for larger conservation purposes, so I now feel it's a legitimate project."
However, the government money is only enough to allow researchers to monitor the animals until they make their way into their dens to hibernate this fall, even though the lifespan of a radio collar is four to five years.
Jeff Gailus, co-ordinator for the Bow Valley Grizzly Bear Alliance, said ending the monitoring after six months raises ethical questions given the stress the bears go through when they are trapped, drugged and collared.
"If you're going to put collars on bears, you're ethically obliged to monitor the bears for the life of the collar. The only reason to monitor them is to gather information so we can figure out how we can put less stress on the population and allow them to persist," he said. "Any wildlife biologist would tell you they would rather not have to collar animals.... If you're going to put them through that, you damn well better get as much information as possible."
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