If you go into the woods this spring in Nova Scotia….you’re in for a pleasant surprise. Because you won’t find a spring bear hunt in progress. Thanks to a decision by the Department of Natural Resources and Renewables to cancel a proposed spring bear hunt, Nova Scotia will remain the only province with a bear population not to have a spring hunt.
On April 17, the Nova Scotia government announced the cancellation, “after careful consideration of feedback from Nova Scotians.” That announcement came after the results of an online survey of more than 17,000 Nova Scotians, as well as numerous emails and letters from individuals and organizations across Canada—including Animal Alliance—showed that a majority of respondents did not support a spring bear hunt in the province.
The government’s decision to nix the proposed May and June hunt will save the lives not only of countless adult black bears, but young cubs orphaned and left to die when—inevitably— mother bears are shot and killed. Evidence from Canadian provinces with a spring bear hunt makes clear that, even with the best efforts to prevent the hunting of female bears with cubs, conservation officers lack resources to investigate cases in which careless or unscrupulous hunters mistakenly or deliberately shoot mothers, leaving cubs to starve or succumb to the elements or die in the jaws of other predators.
On behalf of Animal Alliance, Director Liz White joined the many organization heads who urged the government of Nova Scotia not to institute a spring bear hunt. “Most wildlife we once had on our planet are gone,” she said, adding that a ban on the spring hunt would have resonance beyond the provincial boundaries, by adding Nova Scotia to “the worldwide movement away from so much killing, so much death.”
Of course, there is much more to be done to stop the spring bear hunt elsewhere in Canada. Both Liz and fellow Animal Alliance Director Barry Kent MacKay exhort other jurisdictions to follow Nova Scotia’s example by banning their spring hunts too. This year, as in years past, says Barry, “we don’t know how many cubs will be orphaned, but one is too many.”
The Animal Alliance of Canada thanks the Nova Scotia government for ensuring that, this spring and we hope for many springs to come, that province’s mother bears and cubs will not be among them.
