Draft Grizzly Bear Conservation Plan Released

Thursday, 23 August 2018 11:04

(left to right) Graham Van Tighem, executive director of YFWMB, Thomas Jung, Senior Wildlife Biologist at Yukon Department of Environment, and Tyler Kuhn, biologist with the Yukon Government

The Government of Yukon and the Yukon Fish and Wildlife Management Board released the draft conservation plan for grizzly bears on August 22.

A draft 25 year-long grizzly bear conservation plan was released on behalf of the Government of Yukon and the Yukon Fish and Wildlife Management Board on Wednesday afternoon.

Graham Van Tighem, executive director of the Yukon Fish and Wildlife Management Board, Thomas Jung, Senior Wildlife Biologist at Yukon Department of Environment, and Tyler Kuhn, a biologist with the Yukon Government all were at the conference.

Seven goals were also mentioned in the report, including fostering connection and increased respect to grizzly bears, taking care of the land and minimizing human-grizzly conflicts, ensuring harvest of grizzly bears are sustainable and respectful, and respecting grizzly bear viewing and better understanding human dimensions of grizzly bear conservation.

Jung noted why the report came about.

"It was seen that we had a lot of regulatory proposals put forth for grizzly bears without really having a framework to rely on in terms of the overall vision or strategy for grizzly bears...The second reason why we began a process for grizzly bear planning was back in 2012 when a committee called The Committee on the Status of Endangers Wildlife in Canada assessed grizzly bears as a species of special concern."

While there also was discussion regarding timelines for certain objectives listed in the draft, Jung noted that certain regulations around cultural connections to grizzly bear habitat for First Nations could take much longer in comparison to numerical quotas like limitations on grizzly bear harvesting allowed per year.

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