Propagande de chasseurs d'ours...

[Animal 0]

OFAH FILE: 767/842
May 24, 2005 For Immediate Release
Weekend bear scare in suburbia doesn't surprise O.F.A.H.


Six years after politics killed the spring bear hunt, a major public safety
issue has come sauntering into town. This past weekend in Newmarket, a
costly operation involving a helicopter, several police officers, fire
equipment and a tranquilizer gun resulted in a 10-hour suburban bear hunt.
Just a couple of days before, a black bear was killed by police near an
elementary school in the heart of Peterborough.

"These two incidents are only the beginning of another season of nuisance
bear hysteria in both northern and southern Ontario," said Robert Pye,
communications coordinator for the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters
(O.F.A.H.) As the O.F.A.H. predicted, bears are expanding their range into
parts of southern Ontario, including Newmarket and Peterborough – an obvious
result of the government's cancellation of the spring bear hunt.

Pye said "The O.F.A.H. continues to warn that a record number of bears
wandering into residential areas means there's an increased probability of
people encountering bears. It's just a matter of time before someone,
perhaps a child, gets seriously injured or killed. The O.F.A.H. is adamant
that the return of the spring bear hunt is the best solution for black bear
management."

Recently, the O.F.A.H. obtained the results of last year's M.N.R. Bear Wise
program, a $5.3 million public awareness campaign developed to help handle
all of the complaints that the government now receives about nuisance bears.
The results show that in the months that bears weren't hibernating, the Bear
Wise Hotline received 14,550 calls, from as far north as Red Lake and as far
south as the Greater Toronto Area.

Until recently, few M.N.R. offices maintained nuisance bear records. The
records that do exist for the 1995 to 1998 period (before the hunt was
canned) showed that the M.N.R. received a total of 2,600 nuisance bear
complaints. From 1999 to 2002 (years without a spring bear hunt) these same
offices received 12,426 nuisance bear calls. That's a whopping 500 percent
increase in nuisance bear complaints since the cancellation of the spring
bear hunt. Meanwhile, the province of Manitoba, which has an annual spring
bear hunt, experienced no change in nuisance bear calls over the same time
period.

This summer, hundreds of bears will be shot and wasted (and not reported) by
frustrated property owners worried about protecting their family, pets and
livestock.

"It's a sad commentary about how a once properly managed and highly valued
big game species has quickly become a significant public liability and an
easily expendable pest," said Pye.

-30-

[hop 0]

Gibier de valeur ou nuisible. Pas de place pour autre chose, dans l'esprit ("esprit" est exagéré peut-être ) de ces "dé-prédateurs" (je pique le terme à Gérard Charollois)