Backtracking: More Grizzly Bears and Access Management

 

Source: Alberta Wilderness Association

I just spent some time helping my father-in-law clean up an overflowing stack of mail, magazines and much other paper, and came across an old article relating to access management and grizzly bears, the subject of a post May 2^nd.  A year ago, Westworld Alberta magazine included an article by Jeff Gailus, (see Bear-ly With Us, April 2009) the author interviewed by the CBC's Anna Maria Tremonte April 29^th, about efforts to save Alberta's grizzly bears. 

Mr. Gailus sounds a bit more upbeat in the article than he did on the radio two weeks ago. However, he once again highlighted the role of high road densities and public use of those roads in the bears' Alberta demise.  Its a good article and it does explain the connections between roads and bear recovery in a bit more detail than was possible in the CBC interview.

Interestingly, the article quotes Chris Servheen, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's Grizzly Bear Recovery Coordinator, on managing access without removing roads.

"That's a Holy Grail question ... in the U.S. we have what's called the Knucklehead Factor: it's always five to 10 per cent of the people who cause all the problems.  We don't even count gated roads as closed because we can't get people to obey the closures.  So if the Knucklehead Factor exists in Alberta, you can't reduce access without closing roads."

After my post two weeks ago I got a message from a friend reminding me of the position taken by then Petro-Canada, now Suncor, at the ERCB hearings for a natural gas pipeline/wells proposed south of Alberta's Kananaskis - the "Sullivan project":

"One thing that I noticed in the ... commentary and response from Jeff Gailus  was that there was no mention of open access vs controlled access - simply access.  In [the] ERCB Hearing re: Sullivan - this distinction was made and had to be re-inforced on the premise that not all access is created equal.... and that properly controlled access isn't much different than no access."

Petro-Canada's position is consistent with my conclusions in work I did during 2008-2009 regarding access management (the reports are here) for the Foothills Research Institute.  Its difficult and it requires a well coordinated strategy (rather than just a gate) but access can be controlled once it has been created.  The insurmountable hurdle appears to be the will and the resources to create an effective strategy - so Shell Canada has been able to make a success of managing access in the Waterton region of south-west Alberta and Petro-Canada/Suncor may be able to do so as part of the proposed project development for Sullivan.  Governments though, in both the U.S. and Canada, have a harder time saying no to the Knuckleheads. 

So, perhaps it is better not to create the access in the first place if that's an option.

FYI, Jeff Gailus was kind enough to add some comments to my original post that you might find interesting.