One pioneering grizzly and her two cubs appear on Vancouver Island | Hacker News Reader

One pioneering grizzly and her two cubs appear on Vancouver Island

hakaimagazine.com

114 pointsabscond61 comments

Might make for an interesting development on future seasons of Alone if Grizzles become a common presence on Vancouver Island.

My understanding of read materials so far is the amount of work gone into the program to risk profile danger was incredible, the change in risk profile of the addition of Grizzles on top of wolves and black bears would be quite an adjustment.

My Yukon buddy was the safety officer/local guy when they did alone up on great slave lake in the NWT.( near Yellowknife)

He hung around all the time with his hunting rifle and a 12 gauge loaded with slugs to make sure nobody got eaten.

He got in trouble for sharing smokes and giving fire to the contestants a few times.

Apparently the great slave lake was named after the indigenous dene people, who were called the slave tribe by their enemy tribe the Cree.

No need for the word "tribe" here. They are the Dene. They are the Slave. They are the Cree. we don't say "the German tribe" (of Europe), or the Swiss tribe. This term typically is used to describe a smaller group belonging to a larger group. In this case, the larger group is subconsciously thought of Indians, or even First Nations, or Aboriginals. But the Cree, Slave Dene and any other number of nations are not tribes . They are nations. So, the Cree... The Slave.... The Dene....

I think the comparison you draw with modern Germans or Swiss kind of diminishes your point. It would be more appropriate to compare this to Saxons or something analogous, lest your point seem disingenuous.

The use of tribe, incidentally, is common when describing Saxon tribes, who formed a confederation collectively known as the Saxons. The term tribe is not somehow prejudicial, and it would be a poverty to lose yet another perfectly good word to social hypersensitivity.

Not that your point is invalid, from my limited knowledge of the subject you are correct in pointing out that the Cree, et al are supergroups of tribes and correctly described as nations in the historical sense, and in some limited capacity, in a modern sense.

My point is that you risk undermining your claim if you compare them to a modern, fully sovereign nation, because the context is not apt for comparison, and I think readers lose out if they dismiss your statement based on a poor example.

The smokes don’t seem like that big of a deal but the fire seems like it is a complete disaster for fairness. That’s actually pretty horrific - the other contestants out there working and suffering their asses off to survive and he gave a huge leg up to arbitrary competitors? I should hope he got in serious trouble - can you imagine an official in a sports competition casually messing with the game w/ $1M on the line???

I regret to say that the show is probably only concerned with the appearance of fairness, as viewed by edited footage post-hoc. Not the experience of the contestants so much.

For example, I previously believed the contestants to be truly alone, in that each potential encounter with bears would be hugely risky. But now I know that was a minimal risk because a bodyguard was close enough to intervene, and was probably monitoring grizzly activity in the area.

The mental changes that happen to a contestant when they can even see someone nearby kind of invalidates the whole premise a little.

I think you’re thinking this show is a lot more real than it actually is. It is scripted reality TV, not serious, not real.

He said he and the camera crew talked to the contestants all the time, despite them being shown to be “alone”

I think he said he gave fire to people that already had it anyway and theirs just went out.

They have done at least one season in Interior BC where Grizzlies are present. They have also done seasons in northern Canada where within range of those predators as well.

> It’s also possible that people perceived grizzlies as more threatening and drove them away from food sources, perhaps even killing them.

Kinda funny that this is framed as a less likely theory.

If it was somewhat uncommon for bears to swim across the strait and there weren’t too many, I think it’s enormously likely that First Nations would have actively seeked to rid themselves of rare problem bears.

I'm sad this magazine will be ending soon. They do such great writing.

I was at orcas Island recently. I wanted to have my kids hear some good stories about the place, so I started asking anyone I met, "tell me a story about a dangerous animal attack here!"

Everyone would just say, "hmm, there aren't any dangerous animals..."

Then, one person said. "Well, there was that person that died from a bee sting."

Then someone said "Sometimes the elk swim across the sound and come on the island." I decided I would tell my kids they came over to attack people but I had no evidence that was true.

There were reports of bears getting confused and swimming over and they are quickly relocated.

The most dangerous animal apparently is the mink. In the seventies a rogue employee at a mink farm released a bunch of them, and now they have overrun the place. And they can be vicious hunters. The person that told me that said he had a recent picture in the local newspaper of a mink that went into the ocean and captured an eel. His picture is of the mink rising from the waters with that eel in its mouth.

The mink story is interesting... presumably they are native, but had disappeared locally due to overhunting. But probably many of their competitors also disappeared (martins, weasels, etc) so there's an opening.

Though even that wouldn't seem sufficient... it's not like minks are undergoing natural population booms elsewhere. Which makes me think that there's simply a critical mass advantage, like maybe mink are too anti-social for their own good.

American mink is a good example of a very invasive species in Europe. They seem to enjoy swimming on the sea there also.

They will need to watch very carefully for any negative relationship with the endemic Vancouver Island Marmot, that only lives in a couple spots in the Island. In this case, those bears will need to be captured and moved out of the Island again. Grizzlies have the rest of N America to live.

The marmots are in so few locations and in such small numbers, it seems exceedingly unlikely that it would become an issue. It would be awful if it was a problem though. The marmots have been having record years, and their recovery is really just beginning.

1) Grizzlies are known to ear marmots if they can catch them. Those bears are able to move big stones. One bear that would specialize on open the tunnels and chase the rodents on their nests, could trigger the demise of the wild population in months or weeks. Even before we could notice it.

2) Bears will compete for the same fruits and resources in autumn and have big appetites. Marmots need those fruits to survive winter.

3) Vancouver Marmot societies can collapse suddenly if the number is reduced, because they need a minimum number of watchers for protection while the other eat.

The risk simply doesn't worth it at this moment. Professional advice should be relocation of the bears until the marmot situation improves and creates a minimum number of individuals that would act as a safety buffer. Those bears at least should be radiotracked ASAP and followed by Biologists and specialized workers. That would be the minimum action required. If they enter on the area with marmots they must go. Prioritizing safety of the critically endangered animals over the common species is the correct decision.

I agree they should be tracked, absolutely. I should have specified that I wouldn’t expect it to be an issue in the short term. Eventually they would almost certainly interact, though at that point hopefully the marmots will be established with stable populations.

I also agree that prioritizing endangered species is the right decision here. We have more than enough bears on the island. We don’t really need to ensure grizzlies stay in the mix at the moment, haha.

I have kinda mixed feelings on this. Protecting an endangered species against human hunting, habitat reduction, or other unnatural dangers makes total sense.

But what's unnatural about grizzlies? Were they introduced onto the island by man? Nope. For that matter, the bears on Kodiak -- how did they get there in the first place? They have plenty of salmon so they probably don't need to eat marmots, if there are any. But maybe they wiped out other species we don't know about.

What are you going to do to protect them against other natural predators? And why not introduce them into other suitable habitats, like we've done with wolves in the US? Then we wouldn't be so dependent on one island.

Edit: this is in marked contrast to New Zealand trying to eliminate the stoats and other introduced mammals who are not native and are wiping out the bird species who are. The bears got there on their own.

Are a few brown bears more dangerous to marmots than the many black bears that already live there?

Yes, They are much more strong and need more meat to survive. Being able or not to lift a heavy rock can be the difference between an entire colony of marmots wiped or not. With such small populations of gregarious animals, losing 10 or 20 marmots by three bears in a couple of nights is a serious issue. Is close to the number of survivors in the wild before the rewilding projects started.

Black bears must have some effect on marmots. Both species compete for the food, but the effect can be difficult to study (Black bears eat lots of ants for example, and ants eat surprisingly big amounts of plants also). Ecology is so complex that must be managed by trained professionals, able to see the whole picture, not for companies driven toward selling more newspapers (In the same way as computer security, hospitals, or any other issue important to us; that would cause disasters if not addressed sensibly).

Note that Vancouver Island has absurd numbers of black bear but pretty much or at zero brown bears until now.

I'm wondering if they're u. a. stikeenensis, gyas, dalli, or merely the terribly-named horribilis.

The specific location was kept out of publications for a while but unfortunately the cat is now out of the bag. It looks like an earlier story from near the end of August also divulged that info. Hopefully they are given space next year but there is a real risk that many people will now drive to that spot for a sighting. It was quite impressive that the location was kept out of publications for as long as it was but eventually someone had to ruin that.

My wife and I went to Tofino (on Vancouver) this last summer where you can rent a boat for a tour of the coastal black bears. Very highly recommend it.

(As a local) it sounds weird to say "on Vancouver" without the island part. Vancouver means the city. If you want to sound cool you can say "the Island".

Super cool! I love Vancouver island - normally visit Campbell River where I used to have family. Always wanted to make it to the west side for Tofino or the West Coast Trail.

I hope you made a stop in Hot Springs Cove.

That place is magical.

So are these Grizzlies now an "invasive species" on Vancouver Island?

Explain why or why not you think so!

If they swam there, no. Invasive species have to be introduced by humans, by definition! The effect of grizzlies on the island ecosystem is unknown, and that may be more of what you're talking about.

> If they swam there, no. Invasive species have to be introduced by humans, by definition!

So what do you call it if humans introduce a species to an island A that's really close to another island B — and then the species happens to make the short hop to island B on its own? In a causal sense, that species would not have made it to island B if not for us introducing it to island A.

The article says they probably swam across the Johnstone Straight, from the mainland. There's no mention whatsoever of introducing grizzlies to any nearby island.

If you're asking hypothetically, I'd guess it comes down to whether the islands were separate ecosystems, but Wikipedia would be a much better source than me.

Yes, when an invasive species spreads from where it was first introduced, it remains an invasive species.

By what definition? Humans being involved didn't seem common in definitions I found.

An invasive species is an introduced species that harms its new environment.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_species

An introduced species, alien species, exotic species, adventive species, immigrant species, foreign species, non-indigenous species, or non-native species is a species living outside its native distributional range, but which has arrived there by human activity, directly or indirectly, and either deliberately or accidentally.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduced_species

> The term "invasive" is poorly defined and often very subjective.

I too read the Wikipedia article and this sentence prompted me to survey a few other places. Federal law in the US for instance.

Your quoted definition doesn't appear in the article covering _invasive_ species, only in "introduced species" which of course implies a human introduced them.

The first paragraph is Wikipedia's definition for invasive species as a kind of introduced species with additional attributes. It's the first sentence in the article.

US federal law might be different, I wouldn't know.

No. Species are not static. Large predators like grizzlies and wolves move in and out of areas over decades as they alter prey relatioships. It is hard to describe how vast and unmonitored this part of BC actually is. It is comparabke to the empty parts of alaska, but without the roads. Nobody believes that this is the first, or last, mother grizzly on the island. It may be the first known, or first recorded in the last century, but it will have happened before multiple times. It will be nothing new to nature, not in the long run.

Another island near vancouver (bowen) is said to have no black bears. But given the population density of bears surrounding the island, Bowen could have black bears instantly. All it takes is one pregnant female getting scared enough to make the swim. If they arent there now, they likely were there in centuries past.

Not. Grizzlies aren't invasive here. A species is invasive basically if:

1) has been introduced directly or indirectly by man actions (a mosquito carried on a plane, a lost exotic pet). If arrived by its own means is not invasive.

2) is not a previous part of that ecosystem so it didn't evolved here; There are exceptions to this rule [1][2]

3) is reproducing in the new area (often explosively by lack of predators and diseases), also with some exceptions [3]; and

4) Will modify the ecosystem substantially (displacing or wiping other species in the process).

Wolves on Yellowstone fulfill all points except 2. They aren't invasive. Apples on America don't fulfill points 2 and 4 so they are more healers than destroyers, and reproduce but not exponentially.

------------

[1] Can be ignored when the new species fill a niche from an extinct one, "Healing" the ecosystem. Gray wolves proven to be solid healers for example. Turkeys on Mauritius island could be the only birds able to spread the seeds of some trees unable to reproduce since Dodo went extinct. In this case we can do an exception to save dozens of native species from going extinct.

[2] Creating deliberately a sanctuary of a non native species to reduce the risk of being extinct in their own place, is also allowed.

[3] neutered domestic cats, gone feral, are invasive, because there is still a constant supply from other areas.

The article says that grizzlies did use to exist on the island, so they’d not be invasive

By that definition, horses that were introduced to North America by humans in 16th century are not invasive because they existed in North America 10,000 years ago.

The article also does say that Grizzlies come and go, that the significance here is it’s a female with cubs. So it’s not like grizzlies aren’t present at all on the island.

Of course there could be a boom but apex predators tend to not be super boomy since they’d outstrip their own resources first.

So they fill a niche in a place that evolved with extinct horses and can sustain another species of horse. If they pass a threshold where they drink all the water for example (desert pools on Australia with endemic desert fishes), they became invasive and must go.

How would they avoid inbreeding and genetic mutations if only a single bloodline existed there?

I think the grizzlies will take care of that on their own. Either some bears from the island will swim to the mainland, or vice versa.

Note: don't ask for a link on that. I just suspect animals prefer not to mate with their siblings.

The article says "As the first known female grizzly on Vancouver Island, she could be the progenitor of an entirely new, self-sustaining grizzly population—the first in as many as 12,500 years".

They might be waiting for a long time for other bears to come

The authorities could always bring over some other ones, if that's really what they want.

In any case, the drive to mate is pretty powerful. I would think a female in heat would swim back to the mainland if that was the only way to find a male.

From the article:

'On Vancouver Island—about 10 times closer to the mainland—the genetic diversity of any future grizzly population shouldn’t be a problem. As we’ve seen, “there’ll be males coming over to mix up the genes,” McLellan says. And now, perhaps, the odd female too."'

From the article, males swim over fairly frequently, but usually leave again when they find no females. So, there is a regular opportunity to add to the gene pool. What is newsworthy is that there is now at least one female there (sexes of the cubs are unknown). I think it is still a big leap to assume that a sustainable population is inevitable, however, as the occasional visiting male still has to find the female(s) and the resulting population will still be quite inbred.

Inbreeding tends to solve itself in cases of problems. If the offspring aren't viable, they'll die.

I've been up REAL close to grizzlies, on Kodiak Island [1]. However, that has a population of 13,000 [2], whereas Vancouver has 840,000, according to that article.

That means on Kodiak, the bears have the land mostly to themselves, and humans aren't much of a threat to them. You wouldn't try this in Yellowstone, where fatal bear-human encounters happen regularly. And probably will on Vancouver, too.

[1] https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/travel-disasters

[2] https://usafacts.org/data/topics/people-society/population-a...

It’s important to distinguish “Vancouver” (a city on the mainland) and “Vancouver Island” (an island off the coast).

Vancouver Island has a population nearing a million, but half of it live in the greater Victoria area, which occupies a tiny little peninsula and change on the southern tip. Most of the island - which is huge, approximately four times the size of Kodiak Island, for what it’s worth - is pretty wild and untamed.

I'm sure, but the question is, do the populations intersect? Looking at the map, I see three Provincial Parks up in the north, plus towns and roads. That will mean vacationers will encounter them.

Whereas on Kodiak, there is nothing on one side of the island.

I think it's time that we start to make room once again for the animals we almost drove to extinction. This would be a good, controlled setting to see if we can do this responsibly.

For good reason. Brown bears eat people. You are no more than a slow meal to them. Coexistence means accepting that people will be eaten by bears or bears will be killed by people defending themselves. I think it is worth noting that native tribes prepared for war if the needed to kill a brown bear.

> Attacks on humans, though widely reported, are generally rare.

Brown bears prefer salmon to geezers who talk big, for certain.

Says somebody that has never lived where brown bears do. They can and will gladly eat you if you are the best meal around. Salmon are only around for maybe 1/4 of the year.

How is Vancouver "controlled"? The grizzlies can obviously swim back to the mainland if they don't like it.

> we almost drove to extinction

In the Lower 48, yes. Not in Canada and Alaska.

Some of them can, if they are in good physical condition. There's a reason why there haven't been any females who swam across until now.

Ofc it's Sayward /s

Vancouver Island is beautiful. If only the people's personalities were just as beautiful as the nature, but stuff may have changed since the mid-2000s.

That said, Richmond was worse.

Is the antique car and hot rod show still a thing in Comox?

> If only the people's personalities were just as beautiful as the nature,

Matthew 7:3

> Is the antique car and hot rod show still a thing in Comox?

Looks like it is: https://crownisle.com/event/hot-august-nights-classic-car-sh...

I think Vancouver is the best city in North America.

This is about Vancouver Island, which is NOT where Vancouver City is located.

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