Environment and Planning A 2010, volume 42, pages 1138 ^ 1156
doi:10.1068/a42214
Tracking grizzly bears in British Columbia's environmental
politics
Jessica Dempsey
Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, 1984 West Mall, Vancouver,
BC V6T 1Z2, Canada; e-mail: [email protected]
Received 13 June 2009; in revised form 20 October 2009
Abstract. Geographers and others have written many words about British Columbian environmental
politics. Stories about this place often revolve around conflicts between the government, the forest
industry, First Nations, and environmentalists, battling it out to secure their vision of appropriate land
use on the ground. This paper examines a particularly heated conflict over land use in the Great Bear
Rainforest region, a large tract of temperate rainforest blanketing the central and north coasts of
British Columbia. But this essay takes a different cut into understanding this particular political event,
in that it tracks an often-unrecognized actor through the politics there: the grizzly bear. Drawing
inspiration from scholarship that challenges the primacy of humans in our understandings of politics
and social life, I argue that the grizzly bear influences and inflects BC's coastal forest politics; it is an
important player in the transformation of the Great Bear Rainforest. I tell the story of environmental
politics there by tracing the grizzly bear's shifting relationships with others, including with settlers,
conservation biologists, environmentalists and money, all of which are consequential for the grizzly
bear, and for others in the region.
``There are moments of clarity in life, instances that so completely focus the senses,
there is no yesterday or tomorrow öonly the here and now. Such a moment came
for me in the spring of 2000, on the coast of British Columbia, when my guide
reached for the oar in the bottom of our boat and accidentally spooked a grizzly
cub on shore. The ... three year old bawled and temporarily lost his footing.
His mother, grazing sedge nearby, spun around and stopped mid-chew. We were
so close, I could see the foamy, green saliva at the corners of her mouthöso close
I could see her eyes focus on me. Several heart pounding seconds passed as we
stared at one another, reading body language, plotting possible outcomes. Then all
at once she turned and sat down. Seemingly unconcerned with our presence, she
kept her back to us and her cub as she continued munching on stems and blades.''
Brian Payton (2006, page 1)
I first heard about the `Great Bear Rainforest' (GBR) öwhere the grizzly mother and
her cubs meet journalist Paytonöin 1996 in an environmental studies course, where
my fellow students introduced a new campaign to protect the large swath of what they
called the `last temperate rainforest' on earth (figure 1). The GBR soon went from our
classroom onto the world stage. In only a couple of years this once unheard of place
gained celebrity status; in 1999 the GBR was named the year's most important environmental campaign by Time Magazine. By 2006 the intense political struggle was
resolved with substantial land-use changes, including 113 new protected areas over
2 million ha. How are we to understand the environmental politics of this region?
British Columbian forest politics are not underrepresented in the academic literature (ie Barnes and Hayter, 1997; Braun, 2002; Hayter, 2003; Shaw, 2004; Wilson, 1998),
often characterized as a `War in the Woods' with environmentalists, First Nations, the
government, and the forest industry each staking a claim in the forests. This essay
takes a different cut into understanding this particular political event, in that it tracks
Tracking grizzly bears in British Columbia's environmental politics
1139
Figure 1. Map of the Great Bear Rainforest (Rainforest Solutions Project undated). ß Sierra Club
of British Columbia, by permission.
an often-unrecognized actor through the politics there, the grizzly bear (Ursus arctos
horribilis). I argue that the grizzly bear influences and inflects BC's coastal forest
politics; it is an important player in the transformation of the GBR.
But, as with the moment of encounter with a grizzly on a trail or in a boat,
its influence in the politics is not simple, and is also shot through with all kinds of
material ^ semiotic relationships, entangled encounters and histories. The blood rushing
to pounding heart upon encounter with a grizzly is pumped up with bear mythologies,
gruesome accounts and images of `real-life' attacks, the massive size and stature of the
bear, and the distance between us as different kinds of animals. Similarly, in this paper
I argue the influence of the grizzly bear in the GBR is bound up with socioecological
histories with settlers and guns, its relationships with conservation biology and biologists, environmentalists, and cold hard cash. In tracking the bear, a different sense of
environmental politics emerges, one that shows how politics and transformations in
places like the GBR involve much more than entrenched interests, and rely upon all
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J Dempsey
kinds of creative connections or `ties' to congeal and adhere (Latour, 2005), connections
shot through with affect: ``immaterial, emotional responses, attunements and moments
of becoming'' (Lorimer, 2007, page 4). In tracking the grizzly bear I also foreground
that environmental politics are about learning to live with difference. Grizzly bears, like
Haraway's dogs (2003; 2008), are a companion species, a part of us through thousands
of years of coexisting and coevolving, but also apart from us in what Haraway
calls their `significant otherness', someone who perhaps cannot be well known, but is
consequential.
The paper advances by briefly introducing the place of struggle and my approach.
Following this, I trace though some historical geographies of the grizzly bear in North
America, move into a discussion of its increasingly critical alliances with conservation
biologists and biology, and end by examining the bear's entanglements with environmentalists, their campaigns, and money. In conclusion, I reflect upon what this analysis
offers to our understanding of the politics there, and more generally.
The Great Bear Rainforest ö a briefing
The GBR region is a predominately forested and mountainous coastal area where
moss drips off giant trees into the veins of rivers and inlets that crisscross the space:
``Clouds and mist act as permanent blankets over the rainforest, moderating temperatures and holding in the dampness'' (McAllister et al, 1997, page 69). Precipitation
varies greatly throughout the region, but rarely drops below 1.5 m (annually), rising
up to over 2.7 m in some locations like Kitimat (Environment Canada, no date).
It is teeming with life, more nonhuman than human, including some of the densest
population of grizzly bears in the world, who thrive with the low numbers of roads
and development, and among the (sometimes) salmon-rich streams.
But this is no untouched wilderness; old cannery ruins sit side by side with old pulp
mill sites, unlogged watersheds, tiny First Nations communities like Bella Bella and
Klemtu, and hunting camps. For over 9000 years the region has been home to the
Gitga'at, Haisla, Heiltsuk, Kitasoo/Xai'xais, Kwakwaka'wakw, Nuxalk, Wuikinuxv,
Metlakatla, Ktikatla and Gitga'at, the Lax Kw'alaams, Kitsumkalum, Nisg'a, and
the Haisla First Nations. First Nations communities are growing, although their populations are still a far cry from those that existed prior to colonization, and are
concentrated in a few small settlements, again a far cry from their vast traditional
territories. As elsewhere in BC, Aboriginal land title is alive and well, as treaties
were never signed in most of the Province and recent court rulings have reaffirmed
(if ambiguously) claims that First Nations have over land and resources in their traditional territories. But, despite these rulings, land and forests are still predominately
controlled by the provincial government and covered with long-term corporate forestry
and mining tenures. Resource exploitation has done little for the local people living
there, especially Aboriginal, with unemployment in the region often as high as 80%
(Clapp et al, 2000; Prescott-Allen, 2004). Colonialism is very much present in this
region.
Understanding the politics in the GBR ö my approach
Environmental politics and conflicts over land are always close to the surface in British
Columbia, a province with spectacular physical geography, an incredible array of
different ecosystems, and many exploitable commodities, or commodities-in-waiting.
Geographers Hayter and Clapp have both used the concept of remapping to understand forest politics in British Columbia resulting from the clash of different actors,
interests, and values. For Hayter (2003), each actor or institution öthe government,
First Nations, environmentalists, and the forest industryöare each ``seeking to remap
Tracking grizzly bears in British Columbia's environmental politics
1141
forest resources according to their values'' (page 713), trying to secure their stake in
the forest, all at a time when the global political economy is moving towards more
flexible production strategies and towards increased trade liberalization.
In his analysis of the GBR region, Clapp (2004) describes remapping as ``a social and
technological process in which an existing map or division of resource inventories
and tenures is re-examined and a new allocation of resources is made'' (page 840).
Hayter and Clapp both characterize the struggle as one of `give and take', negotiation,
or a balancing act between these competing human interests and values, with each
actor doing what they can to achieve their goals on the land öalongside contributions
from scientists and technicians to support each interest, and in relation to broader
social currents, like emerging social movements and economic shifts.(1) There is no
doubt that First Nations, governments, environmentalists, and the forest industry are
critically important players in this event, as are the differing values they hold. And
there is no doubt that the conflicts are discursive ones, haunted by colonial visions
and tropes that equate First Nations people with nature and sideline their immediate
struggles (Braun, 2002).
These analyses are incredibly helpful for understanding environmental politics in
BC, and for the GBR region. But in tracking the grizzly bear's influence, I take a
different cut through the politics there, focusing less on the embedded, formed interests
shaping land use in British Columbiaöthe usual suspects of forest industry, environmentalists, First Nations, and the governmentöeach fighting over their piece of the
pie. In taking this approach I draw from scholars who view environmental politics as
constitutive, performative, and wholly relational (Sundberg, 2004; Tsing, 1999; 2005),
who dispute that all the action in environmental politics stems from class essences
(ie urban environmentalist, forest worker), or identities formed prior to ``their entry
into social relations that constitute conservation'' (Sundberg, 2004, page 44; see also
Latour, 2005).
This intervention is centrally inspired by a whole range of multifarious scholarship
challenging the primacy of humans in our understandings of politics and social life,
found in many strands, including relational ontologies and more-than-human geographies (eg Barad, 2007; Braun, 2004; Whatmore, 2002), actor-network theory (eg Latour,
1999; 2005), nonrepresentational theory (eg Latham and McCormack, 2004; Lorimer,
2008), and animal geographies (eg Philo and Wilbert, 2000; Wolch and Emel, 1998).
Too often, such scholars argue, nonhumans are rendered ``a mute and stable background to the real business of politics'' (Hinchliffe, 2008, page 89): for example, in
my research site, as a passive territory that political players stake control over, discursively and materially. Rather, as Robbins (2007) argues, ``Non-humans have social lives,
act on economic systems, and have political forces exerted on them, and are reconstituted in the process'' (pages 58 ^ 59). But how do they have social lives, how do they
exert force? Finding out is not an easy endeavor, and it requires having a different view
of what things, including humans and bears, are (ontologically), and how they make a
difference in the world (agency).
To start, it requires viewing political players not as individuals, or persons, or
institutions, but rather relationally, as ``iteratively constituted through ensembles of institutions, procedures, materialities, calculations and tactics'' (Hobson, 2007, page 257).
Under such a view the influence or agency of those involved in struggles is also formed
(1)
But there are important distinctions to be made in their characterizations of remapping. For
Hayter, the ``wanna-be remappers'' like environmentalists, First Nations, and the US government
and forest industry are undemocratic encroachments on state sovereignty; whereas Clapp sees
remapping as a progressive event propelled by resource exhaustion and social movements contesting
previous mappings.
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J Dempsey
relationally; agency is not an inherent attribute of something or someone; it does not
flow from human autonomy or purpose or values, but rather is made in negotiations,
alliances, and conflicts between a much wider array of actors, both human and non.
It is more of ``a circulating capacity, something that is partially gained or lost by
hooking up to certain bodies of practices'' (Latour, 1999, page 23). This widens the
suite of political actors that matter beyond the humans sitting at the negotiation table,
as all entities are ``imbued with the capacity for affectöthe capacity to be acted upon,
and the capacity to act'' (Braun, 2004, page 1354). The grizzly bear in the GBR is not
an inert, passive object that environmentalists use as a pawn in their games, or just a
symbol. The grizzly bear is a nonhuman whose presence in the space and in its past
and present relationships with others, influences the `state of affairs', helping give shape
to new political ^ economic geographies in BC.
Tracing how the grizzly bear makes a difference in the GBR means remaining open
to the way such relationships between bears and variously situated humans are ``not
locked in to rational or predictable logics, and often are visceral and instinctive''
(Lorimer, 2008, page 552). This affective materiality of grizzly bears is a part of explaining why and how land use in the GBR was transformed. For Latham and McCormack
(2004), to speak of the affective materiality of something is ``to speak of the intensity of
the relations in and through which it consists, relations that are always more than
personal and are always playing out before the reflective event of thought kicks in''
(page 706). This includes the felt insecurity of sharing space with an animal who could
kill or maim you (even though it will probably avoid you) and the grizzly bear's
nonhuman charisma, its anatomical and aesthetic properties that contribute to the
way that humans perceive, relate to, and care for them (Lorimer, 2007).
Methodologies of bear tracking
As others have noted, understanding how grizzly bears are a part of the politics in
this region presents a methodological challenge (Braun, 2008; Whatmore, 2006);
how to be attuned to the difference the bears make? For me, this required paying
attention to the traces the bear left in the course of my research (Hinchliffe et al,
2005; Sundberg, forthcoming), in the negotiations, in interviews, in the many scientific
studies. It required going beyond my immediate study site and politics to learn more
about the history of grizzly bears in North America, including accounts of often
violent settler ^ bear interactions that, when repeated, led to widespread extermination.
To understand the growing influence of the grizzly bear in the increasingly scientific
land-use planning I turned to studies of bear behaviour (ethology) and ecologies,
to learn about the ways grizzly bears adapt, react, and become-otherwise in their
interactions with each other, with other animals, with all kinds of humans, and within
changing landscapes. Methodologically, it meant taking seriously moments of encounter between actual bears and humans öthe affective materiality of the bearöand
linking these moments with other social and political events such as the beginning of
widespread environmentalist attention, or to the development of scientific knowledge
about the GBR ecosystem.
In doing so, I build a case for seeing the grizzly bear as a serious actor that has
been involved in ``reworking the physical space'' of British Columbia ``so it could be
accommodated'' (Latham and McCormack 2004, page 711), who intimately and actively
helps shape ``how biodiversity conservation proceeds'' (Braun, 2008, page 671). Bringing
nonhumans into our accounts of environmental politics is one way to get beyond
thinking about conservation and environmental politics as simply a clash of different
interests and values.
Tracking grizzly bears in British Columbia's environmental politics
1143
Grizzly bears are threatened species, even where viable
Stories of BC environmental politics often situate the conflicts within histories of
corporate-state land and resource exploitation and colonialism (ie Braun, 2002; Hayter,
2000; Marchack, 1983; Wilson, 1998). These are critically important histories to tell;
but they are not the only relevant histories needed to understand the environmental
politics there, or the politics of the GBR.
Bang, Bang, Bang
``About 8 A.M. this morning, a Bear of the large vicious Species being on a Sand
bar raised himself up on his hind feet and looked at us as we passed down near the
middle of the river. He plunged into the water and Swam towards us, either from
a disposition to attack't or from the Cent of the meat which was in the Canoes.
We Shot him with three balls and he returned to shore badly wounded.''
William Clark (1806)
While there is evidence that First Nations (Aboriginal) people did not live harmoniously with grizzly bears prior to colonization (Hamilton and Austin, 2001; Turner et al,
2000), it was mostly through encounters like the one described above by the famed US
explorer William Clark (of Lewis and Clark fame)öencounters repeated over and over
againöthat the grizzly bear became largely extirpated from the lower forty-eight
states. Records of expeditions and settlers of the West are ``punctuated with account
of encounters with grizzly bears'' (Herrero, 1985, page 11), and the arrival of firearms,
particularly the repeating rifle, was a detrimental moment for the grizzly bear and
its relations with humans, one that reduced, but did not eliminate, the danger of an
encounter with a grizzly bear.
But relations were not all bad; the introduction of cattle ranching initially led to an
increase in grizzly bear populations, with livestock being easy prey for the bears
(Mattson and Merrill, 2002). But that relation was short lived, as cattle and sheep
growers' associations, along with local and state governments began to offer bounties
for bears, which drastically reduced populations (McNamee, 1982). The scale of killing
cannot be overstated; it is estimated that ten thousand bears once roamed the state of
California, the last one being seen in 1924.
Grizzly bears posed specific economic threats, but were also considered more
generally as ``dangerous impediments to progress'' (Peek et al, 2003, page 7) by colonial
settlers, undoubtedly influencing the pace of killing and `civilizing' of the landscape.
As someone who has worked in grizzly bear country, I can fully understand the fear,
and the corresponding longing for a powerful rifle, that come from sharing space with
such a creature. Grizzly bears are enormous and enormously powerful. As McNamee
(1982) describes:
``The musculature that powers those terrifying jaws öa bulging knot the size and
shape of a flattened football on each side of the head, often giving the scalp
a distinctive central creaseöis quite sufficient for a full-grown grizzly to snap a
six-inch-pine tree in two, or to crush a Hereford's skull like an eggshell'' (page 74).
Males can reach up to 1000 pounds, with females about 38% smaller but still extraordinarily powerful and protective of their young. And, despite their great size, grizzly
bears would easily catch most humans in a foot raceöthey can run up to about 40 km
per hour. They are often distinguished from black bears by a large hump on the
shoulders, a large muscle to power digging. When walking in the alpine areas of remote
mountains, one does not need an active imagination to wonder what other uses those
muscles could have!
So while the eradication of bears was impelled by economic rationales, it was also a
part of a project of producing `biosecurity', what Buller (2008) defines as ``a traditional,
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J Dempsey
almost visceral understanding of the notion of biosecurity within human societies, that
of not being eaten by big and ferocious wild animals'' (page 1583). What matters about
the bear here is that it can kill humans, an insecurity resolved by simple eradication:
``the story of America's conquest of the grizzly suffers, ultimately, from a deadening
sameness. Bang bang bang. How I kilt the bar that almost kilt me. Bang'' (McNamee,
1982, page 38).
But yet, this threat of death upon encounter is not a fait accompli. Most often,
encountered grizzly bears will avoid people and not act aggressively or attack, even if a
person suddenly appears nearby (Herrero, 1985). The experiences of Timothy
Treadwellöalso known as Grizzly Manöare also telling; he spent thirteen summers
tracking and interacting with grizzly bears in Alaska without serious conflict. Video
footage, presented in Werner Herzog's documentary Grizzly Man (2005) shows bears
somewhat untroubled by Treadwell's presence, even letting him reach out and touch
them. But yet, in 2003, Treadwell and his girlfriend were killed and partially eaten by
a bear. As Braun writes, ``the capacity of bodies to be affected and to affect other
bodiesöhuman and non-human alikeöare not given in advance'' (2008, page 672);
grizzly bears have a wide range of possible responses to encounter, responses that
cannot be fully predicted, breeding insecurity in the hearts of many.
Habitat loss
Direct killings are one of two major factors in grizzly bear eradication. The other,
unsurprisingly, is the disappearance of grizzly habitat and food stemming from settler
land use and development. Even if humans stop killing grizzly bears (and this is the
case in many parts of North America due to endangered species regulations) current
land uses in many parts of North America and BC cannot support grizzly bears. Said
most generally, and at coarse scales, the characteristics of grizzly bears, their biological
and physiological needs, tend to clash with settler patterns of development.
Grizzlies need a lot of space to roam and den in, ranging over large distances
throughout their lifetimes. In the GBR region females have an average range of 300
km2, although this varies significantly from bear to bear (Hamilton and Bunnell, 1987).
These roaming habits are correlated to foraging, as grizzly bears require an incredible
amount of high-energy food to reproduce and stay alive. As McNamee (1982, page 69)
describes, the bears are constantly hungry; in seven months they must take in twelve
months' worth of food, and it is critical that by October or November they have
enough fat to get them through five months of hibernation. This hunger is compounded in the case of mothers with cubs, who nurse for at least one year, in some
cases two. For comparison, black bears can exist at about ten times the density of
grizzly bears, largely due to their smaller size and appetites (Mattson et al, 2005).
When forestry activities, ski hills, or farms encroach on grizzly bear habitats, the
result is generally less food for bears, a smaller area to roam, and more chances for
conflicts. But like the encountered bear, not all bears react the same way to shifting land
use like forestry and agriculture. For example, some bears live in high-quality food
habitats near human centers, perhaps because of food availability or because of security
from aggressive bears (Herrero, 1985; Jeo et al, 1999). Most grizzlies are flexible and
opportunistic eaters, who can learn to adapt to new food sources like clearcuts
(Ciarniello et al, 2007) and garbage dumps (McNamee, 1982). Indeed, while animal
behavorists think bears prefer solitude, they will feed together in groups if necessary
(again, at garbage dumps or salmon streams), working out ``cautious social accommodation and live close together if not exactly cooperatively'' (McNamee, 1982, page 57).
But living in closer proximity to human settlements or to recreation areas leads to
increased conflicts (Ciarniello et al, 2007), often leading to mortality (for the bears).
Tracking grizzly bears in British Columbia's environmental politics
1145
Shrinking geographies and viably threatened grizzly bears
The general result of the project of biosecurity (direct killing) and settler land use in
North America was a collapse in grizzly bear range to the north and west of the
continent (see figure 2), pointing to a wholly asymmetrical relation between settlers and
the bears, who now inhabit only about 1% of their former range in the continental US.
It is this relation, and its ever-shrinking geographical range that make the grizzly
bear a threatened species, and connect it to a whole host of laws (ie United States
Endangered Species Act, the Canadian Species at Risk Act, Committee on International Trade on Endangered Species), and other policies and strategies. As Buller
(2008) writes, ``The risk of attack and predation was substituted by a new risk, that of
species disappearance and extinction'' (page 1586). But, in contrast to the fate of the
grizzly bear in most of North America, in the GBR the bear is considered `viable',
at least according to British Columbian government assessments (see figure 3).
Indeed, the area is considered home to some of the densest populations in the world,
the bears gorging themselves on the abundant salmon, berries, and sedges. Unlike in
the continental US and most of Canada, one can still apply for a grizzly bear hunting
Historic distribution
Present distribution
1000 km
0
1000 miles
Figure 2. Historic and present distribution of grizzly bears in North America (Servheen et al,
1999). ß US Fish and Wildlife.
1146
J Dempsey
Grizzly bear
population units
March 2004
Viable
Threatened
Extirpated
Never occupied
Figure 3. Map of grizzly bear population units (Government of British Columbia, 2004).
ß Government of British Columbia.
license in BC, and in 2007 a record number of grizzlies were killed (Suzuki and Moola,
2008).
But yet the grizzlies in the GBR, even with their relatively large population
numbers, or `viability', are simultaneously threatened. This is due to the on-going
hunt, but also because the GBR bears and their current health are deeply entwined
with the nasty (and very material) histories, geographies, and experiences of their
ancestors as described in the previous sectionöwhat Haraway calls their pastpresents.
Pastpresents is a `material ^ semiotic tool' Haraway (drawing from Katie King) uses
to think about how ``the past, present and future are all very much knotted into one
another'' (2008, page 292). In the case of the GBR, I argue that present environmental
politics are very much knotted with these fraught pasts:
``British Columbia is unique in that grizzlies still inhabit much of the province, even
though they have been eliminated from almost all of their historical territory across
the planet. That means we have a global responsibility to protect this iconic
carnivore'' (Suzuki and Moola, 2008; see also McAllister et al, 1997).
That famed environmentalist Suzuki uses the word `iconic' to describe the grizzly
should not go unnoticed; but if there is one thing my brief history of the grizzly bear
tells us is that this icon status is a material ^ semiotic distinction, not only a symbol
of a wilderness lost.
In telling this history of grizzly bear eradication, I foreground how the politics
in the GBR are haunted not only by corporate-state forestry, and violent colonial dispossession, but also by moments of encounter between the grizzly bear and
Tracking grizzly bears in British Columbia's environmental politics
1147
gun-toting settlers in a wholly different time and a different place. The present political
struggle is joined up with this past, and with the project of making space for grizzly
bears. Seeing the history of eradicated bears as a pastpresent is a launching pad for
thinking differently about environmental politics in BC, one where the fuzzy and
frightening presence and absence of grizzly bears inflects the politics of the region,
and where human actors and their interests in land and resources are not the only
things at stake. In the following section I track the grizzly bear in its relations with
conservation biologists, as it becomes a focal species, furthering its influence in the
politics of the GBR.
Grizzly bear becomes a focal species
As described above, the grizzly bear's typical behaviors and physiology öits wideranging use of habitat on the coast, voracious appetite, and threatening repose öhave
not meshed well with settlers. But these same features also make it a critically important
species for conservation biologists, who consider it a focal species whose well-being can
tell us about ecosystem health more generally. The concept differs from flagship species
like WWF's giant panda, which operate as ``highly visible icons of conservation''
(Lorimer, 2007, page 13).
Focal species, as defined by conservation biology, are those species whose protection, as a group, concurrently protects all or at least most other native species in the
region or area (Lindenmayer et al, 2002). Focal species are needed, biologists argue,
because of the sheer complexity of many ecosystems, which make it ``practically
impossible to determine the ecological needs for every species resident in the region''
(Jeo et al, 1999, page 23). Focal species are a kind of shortcut to maintaining ecosystem
health based on the assumption that, when we focus on the most threatened or
demanding species, we ``will encompass the needs of all other species'' (Lambeck cited
in Lindenmayer et al, 2002, page 339).
Grizzly bears are identified as focal species in the two major conservation planning
studies and processes for the GBR region. Why? As one study notes, grizzly bears were
chosen
``because they, like other large carnivores, can be keystones (transporting salmon
away from spawning channels), indicators (because they are susceptible to a wide
variety of human influences and have low population densities), and umbrellas
(representing a number of species because of their use of such a wide variety of
habitats)'' (Rumsey et al, 2004, page 62).
Unlike say, a Douglas Fir tree, coastal grizzly bears use an incredible range of habitat
to meet their nutritional, security, thermal, reproductive, and `space' needs. They live in
subalpine areas, valley bottoms, estuaries, old growth (for denning), and young forests
(for berries); they use wetlands and dry areas, and salmon streams during spawning
(Rumsey et al, 2004). According to the focal species approach, if grizzly bears are
healthy and happy with their habitat, other species likely have enough habitat too.
There are on-going debates in the conservation literature about focal species.
Conservation biologists themselves have noted that the selection of focal species shows
a tendency towards charismatic megafauna and towards species with established
research (Jeo et al, 1999), and there is much debate on the selection and usefulness of
focal species for protecting the larger ecosystem (Lindenmayer et al, 2002; Simberloff,
1998). As with all scientific categories, they are cut into understanding the world
(Barad, 2007), and there is no necessary relation between the ecological and behavioral
attributes of the grizzly bear and its designation as focal species.(2) My concern here is
(2)
Thanks to reviewer for this point.
1148
J Dempsey
not with whether grizzly bears represent the larger ecosystem truthfully. Rather, I see
conservation science and the transformation to focal species as a ``technology of
practice and an intervention in the world'' (Whatmore, 2006, page 601), one that is
not constructed out of thin air, but based upon fleshy encounters with bears öand their
anatomical and biological features. The properties of the grizzly bear do matter to this
designation, including its wide-ranging use of habitat, high food requirements, low
birth rates, history of fraught relations with humans, and what Lorimer (2007) calls
its `nonhuman charisma'. Defined as the ``distinguishing properties of a non-human
entity or process that determine its perception by humans and its subsequent evaluation'' (page 5), the grizzly bear, with its round face, two eyes, nose, fur, and the ability
to walk on hind legs, is an animal that humans can more easily understand than
others; it ``engages in a great deal of behavior that can be understood in human terms''
(McNamee, 1982, page 44). It has ecological charisma, which results from the specific
articulation between human properties (our competencies that frame how we can
understand animals and what they do, are) and the specific properties of the animal
itself (Lorimer, 2007). Such charisma, as Lorimer (2007) argues, can be magnified and
constructed to some degree by scientists and conservationists, ``but this is constrained
by the ecological characteristics and particular agencies of the species themselves''
(page 17).
The grizzly bear, in its relation with conservation biology/ists, becomes a focal
species. As a focal species, the grizzly bear truly becomes the monarch of the forest,
and its needs become increasingly paramount in the political negotiations over
the space, negotiations which increasingly turn to science. Between 1999 and 2004, the
height of the environmental struggle, two comprehensive studies were commissioned
and carried out to help determine what kind of land uses could support the long-term
persistence of nonhuman life in the GBR. The first, commissioned by environmental
groups (Sierra Club of British Columbia, Raincoast Conservation Society, Forest
Action Network, and Greenpeace Canada) and carried out by conservation biologists,
focused on the central coast portion of the region, and attempted to show where and
how large protected areas needed to be to sustain ecosystem health. In it bears take
center stage as a focal species, standing in for ecosystem health. The study concluded
that the bears needed over 700 000 ha of protected areas to persist, along with the
restoration of an additional 802 200 ha (Jeo et al, 1999). These 1.5 million ha, totaling
32% of the study region, contain habitats thought to meet grizzly bear needs: areas
with low road density (less than 0.6 km/km2 ), and including estuaries, salmon streams,
and old-growth forests.
The other major study, an ecosystem spatial analysis (ESA), set out to ``identify
priority areas for biodiversity conservation and to provide an information base and
decision support for subsequent planning and management efforts'' (Rumsey et al,
2004, page 1). Covering the entire GBR region, this study was conducted by the Coast
Information Team, a multidisciplinary group brought together to provide independent
information and analyses to resolve the GBR conflict. Most important for my analysis
is the role that the grizzly bear continues to play; it appears as one of the key focal
species in this study, as a species whose needs are closely related to those of the entire
ecosystem. Using geographical information systems (GIS), the ESA team modeled a
number of different land-use configurations for the coast, assessing how well these
plans would impact on focal species. One suggestion emanating from the ESA was
that the grizzly bear's protected habitat should increase from 10% of the region to 30%
of the region (see Rumsey et al, 2004, page 144).
The key point is this. With its high food requirements, low birth rates, fraught
pastpresents, ecological charisma, and in articulation with conservation biology and
Tracking grizzly bears in British Columbia's environmental politics
1149
its tools of GIS, tracking devices, models, the grizzly bear becomes the central yardstick
for the health of the entire ecosystem. This transformation, as with the bear's pastpresents, is a material and semiotic transformation. And, as a focal species, the grizzly
bearöincluding where and how it eats, births, defecates, and lives öbecomes increasingly consequential to the political negotiations over the space, negotiations which
increasingly turn to science.
The next section of the paper focuses on the bear's relationship with environmental
groups and traces the outline of the political negotiations in the GBR, wherein both the
bears and environmentalists achieve increased influence, together.
Grizzly bears become a synecdoche and financial incentive
``Everywhere in the Koeye valley there were signs of bears öwhere they had lain
down in beds of moss under big old trees, and where they had walked on trails
worn deep into the forest floor by hundreds of generations of bears moving
between their favourite fishing spots and the cover of the forest ... . One evening
I sat on a piece of driftwood with my feet wrapped in sand, staring out to the open
Pacific ... . The rear paw print of a grizzly bear lay fresh in front of me, intricately
etched into the moist sand. Not only was I deeply impressed by the rare beauty and
ecological significance of all that I was seeing, I was damn curious about what kind
of animal went with a footprint so large. I knew from that moment forward a large
part of my time was going to be devoted to tracking that shy monarch of the
rainforest, the maker of these great tracks, and trying to understand how its fate
and the fate of the wilderness rainforest were joined.''
McAllister et al (1997, page 13)
Environmentalist aspirations, their hopes and dreams for the GBR, are shaped by the
place itself, its rarity, scale and remoteness, the charismatic and threatened animals
living there, all tied up with their own (variable and various) ideas of what nature is
and should be. Here I narrow in on how grizzly bears articulate with and constitute
environmentalist views of and desires for changed land use in the GBR, and thus
become increasingly influential in the remapping of the region.
As the quote above (by leading GBR activists Ian and Karen McAllister) demonstrates, relations between the grizzly bear and environmental movements are deeply
rooted in the GBR, and elsewhere. One of America's first conservationists, Leopold
(1949), writes eloquently and regretfully in his famed Sand County Almanac about
the killing of what may have been one of the last grizzly bears in Arizona. This relationship is helped along, as discussed above, by the bear's charisma, its anatomical,
aesthetic properties that contribute to the way that humans perceive, relate to, and
care for it (Lorimer, 2007). The grizzly bear has extreme cuddly charisma with a face
and fur that trigger human concern, characteristics captured well by Ian McAllister's
well-circulated campaign photographs (see figure 4). And as noted earlier, the bear
demonstrates behaviors that are easily understood by environmentalists like the
McAllisters: the bears in the GBR visit the same fishing spots and leave traces of
naps on beds of moss. Such characteristics lend themselves easily to what Whatmore
calls human extensionism, referring to an ethical register that leads some to extend
rights, or care, to those nonhumans who are most like us (Whatmore, 1997).
Indeed environmentalist interest in the GBR region has always been in relation to
the grizzly bear. In 1986 ^ 87, the Khuzymateen valley was to be logged, what some
biologists and environmentalists considered some of the best bear habitat in the
Province (Wilson, 1998, page 224). Through tremendous environmentalist pressure
the area was protected as a Grizzly Sanctuary. By the mid-1990s increasing numbers
1150
J Dempsey
Figure 4. Close up photo of grizzly bear. ß Ian McAllister.
of environmentalists began to focus intently on the region, drawn by the large number of
valleys untouched by industrial forestry and the rich life there, including the grizzly bear.
In 1996 environmentalists solidified their relationship with the grizzly bear, by christening
the region `The Great Bear Rainforest':
``It is called the Great Bear Rainforest because it is one of the great grizzly bear
strongholds in the world. This is a daunting coastal landscape of some 3.2 million
hectares extending northward along B.C.'s central and north range from Knight
Inlet to Alaska'' (Sierra Club of BC, 1999, page 3).
By 1997 campaigns over the newly minted Great Bear Rainforest were in full force.
Environmental groups focused their attention on persuading large consumers (eg,
Home Depot) to stop buying GBR forest products, known as a market campaign.
Saving the bears' homes plays big within these campaigns. Indeed bears became the
material ^ semiotic creatures of the GBR campaign as environmentalists capitalized on
the political opportunities the bear presents as a charismatic megafauna, a symbol of a
disappearing wild, and a threatened and focal species. The biophysical needs of the
grizzly bearölarge, diverse, and contiguous habitatsöarticulate almost perfectly with
a central tenant of Western conservation, that of wilderness (Cronon, 1995). For the
McAllisters (McAllister et al, 1997), it is the grizzly bear more than anything that
justifies their vision for land use in the GBR (which is almost complete protection of
the unlogged watersheds): ``setting aside small areas cannot protect a species like the
grizzly bear: their range is measured not in one river valley but in clusters of river
valleys that may cover hundreds of thousands of hectares'' (page 132). As the campaign
moves along, the bear becomes a synecdoche for the entire region. This transformation
hangs on the grizzly bear's discursive and cultural significance, but also very much
upon the bear's material needs for food, water, and shelter, its charisma, and its mostly
deathly past encounters with settlers, and settler land use elsewhere in North America.
Direct, face-to-face interactions with bears also matter critically to the campaign.
Campaign donors are invited on boating trips to experience the valleys in the region,
as are corporate executives of companies who purchase forest products from the area.
One simply cannot replace an encounter with a grizzly bearöthe pounding heart,
the fear, the aweöwith a slug or goshawk (also residents of the GBR) or a photograph
Tracking grizzly bears in British Columbia's environmental politics
1151
of one. One seasoned tour guide, Tom Elison, describes on-going interactions with an
orphaned grizzly bear cub in the region:
``I'd have to gently push her paw away with the oar so she wouldn't climb aboard ... .
When the fight was really heating up to save this place, we were able to bring
influential people to see the bears ... . She gave many of them an opportunity to get
up close and have a personal experience. The bear let us into her life and helped
save this valley. This is a special place where these kinds of meetings can happen''
(quoted in Payton, 2006, page 4 ^ 5).
While these face-to-face meetings with bears matter to the campaign, the grizzly
bear also travels well.(3) The bear appears in protests outside Home Depot, where
activists like the raging grannies ask them to stop selling the grizzly bear's rainforest
homes. The same anatomical features that contribute to the bear's charisma translate
well to costume; in the spring of 1999 a grizzly bear (or an activist dressed as one) was
arrested at Home Depot in Toronto while demanding they stop selling the bear's home.
In response to these pressures, by the year 2000, Home Depot and Lowes, along
with other forest product consumers, agreed to stop buying GBR forest products, an
incredibly important intervention into the political economy of the province. At this
moment, the grizzly bear and its allies become as, or perhaps more, influential than
an entrenched forest industry. By this I refer to an agreement reached in April 2001
between forest companies, environmentalists, most coastal First Nations, and the
provincial government: a deal that brings increased protected areas (forty-two watersheds were officially protected, totalling 603 000 ha), a moratorium on logging in
seventy-seven other watersheds (537 000 ha), an end to the market campaign, and an
agreement to solve the conflict in the region through collaborative land-use planning
between all stakeholders and governments (including First Nations) in the region,
advised by an independent science body.
This moment, while a victory for some hard-working and strategic environmentalists and for some First Nations (some of whom saw it as an opportunity to make
progress on land-rights issues outside a deadlocked treaty process), emerges from a
coalescence of actors and events including a general downturn in the forest industry
(Hayter, 2003) and legal rulings on Aboriginal rights and title. But it is also a moment
very much entwined with the grizzly bear, whose life histories, characteristics, and
ecologies were a part of convincing environmentalists and customers of BC's forest
products, that status quo land use was unacceptable.
Grizzly bears become financial incentive
The `collaborative land-use planning' process for the GBR takes place between 2002
and 2006, with much of the obvious talking and decision making resting with participating First Nations, the provincial government, the forest industry, and environmental
groups. But the bear shows up in these negotiations too, particularly when it becomes
articulated with a new figure: the almighty dollar. This relationship is forged through
existing relations with environmental groups and conservation science, and new allies:
private and public financing.
These relations became clearest at a meeting of the land-use planning process I
observed in November 2003. At this meeting a member of the environmental groups
involved presented a conservation financing model. For the GBR region, conservation
financing was described as a vehicle through which conservation investors, such as
foundations and governments, make a financial investment in a First Nation based
on the conservation value of their land-use plan. In short, this conservation financing
(3)
In this way the bear might also be characterized as a boundary object (Star and Griesemer,
1989) in that it appears in multiple worlds and epistemological communities
1152
J Dempsey
package would award each First Nation with traditional territory in the GBR with a
financial contribution, but the amount would vary based upon the amount and quality
of conservation agreed to in their territory. The carrot was being dangled, but how
exactly would conservation value be measured?
The speaker outlined three factors. The first, worth 50% of the conservation value,
was based upon both the quality and the quantity of land protected by the First Nation.
Quality would be assessed based upon `biodiversity values' as assigned to various
parcels of land in the region by the Coast Information Team, the same `independent
science team' that conducted the ESA. As with most measures of ecosystem health,
measures of `biodiversity value' rely upon surrogates, as it is virtually impossible to
catalog all the species over such a large space. And here is where the grizzly bear
influences how the money flows. As a focal species in the GBR, the allocation of
high biodiversity values is strongly associated to prime grizzly habitat. And the higher
the biodiversity values, the higher the financial contribution.
The second factor, worth 20% of the funds allocated, was based upon the contribution that `protected' parcels of land have towards creating contiguous and connected
spaces for large carnivores. This is also connected to the grizzly bear, who roams far
and wide, and who seems to thrive in large, more contiguous and connected habitats.
The third and final factor influencing the funds, less connected to conservation value,
was the amount of territory a First Nation puts under protection in relation to its total
traditional territory öworth 30% of the funds allocated.
In the meeting a graph was presented to put all the algorithms and percentages
under a less technical lens. With increased quality and quantity of land under protection monetary compensation would exponentially grow, up to $20 million per individual First Nation (obtainable if the First Nation placed 60% of the `high biodiversity
value' lands in their traditional territory into conservation).
Such models and funds while surely influential, should not be seen causing First
Nations or the provincial government to agree to increases in protected areas. Rather
they were a part of making the final land-use agreement move in a conservation
direction, alongside many other factors, including critically the aims and desires of
various First Nations communities on the coast.(4) My purpose in highlighting this
moment is to show how traces of grizzly bears are everywhere and to demonstrate how
the bears' characteristics and properties inflected the land-use planning negotiations.
This is not something the grizzly bear achieved `on its own', but rather through its ties
with environmentalists, conservation science/ists, and a new ally ömoney.
A new geography appears
Announced in February 2006 (after almost five years of negotiations), the final landuse agreement for the GBR includes 113 new protected areas, totaling 2 million ha.
This protects about 30% of the prime grizzly habitat in the region. Stories about
the agreement appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Chicago
Sun-Times, The Moscow Times, The Taipei Times, and even the Jamaica Observer ;
most focus on the sheer quantity of protection, the 2 million ha. The February 2006
agreement also included a $120 million fund for local and First Nations economic
development in the region and commitments to develop and implement new institutions for comanagement between the Province and First Nations over the resources
in their territories, according to an agreed-upon ecosystem based management
approach. While jurisdiction remains the same under these agreements (ie there has
(4)
First Nations communities, and their leaderships, are a critical part of the story on the coast, a
part of this story that deserves a lengthy analysis, not possible in the scope and focus of this paper.
Tracking grizzly bears in British Columbia's environmental politics
1153
been no change in title or ownership), some First Nations leaders in the area view these
agreements with hope (Smith, quoted in ENS, 2006; Wilson quoted in ENS, 2006)
in terms of increasing their control over traditional territories, shifting away from
confrontation, and dealing with the unemployment and conditions in First Nations
communities. The agreements accomplished a major `remapping' of the region (Clapp,
2004), although it is too soon after the agreements to make definitive judgments about
the extent to which these agreements will bring about new relationships between the
grizzlies, the forest industry, the province, environmentalists, First Nations, and local
communities, to name a few of many. Some environmentalists (see Blunt, 2006) and
even a forestry academic (Hoberg, 2009) decry the agreements as protecting too little
in conservation terms. And there are real uncertainties as to how this `comanagement'
will play out on the ground, as the millions of dollars have yet to flow in any quantity
for coastal First Nations communities.
The massive increases in conservation areas will likely make life easier for grizzly
bears, although they are not totally on easy street: salmon stocks are in decline, and
there is the compounding factor of climate change. The future of the grizzly bear, like
that of so many other species on the planet, is never a sure thing, and is variable over
time and space. As I write the conclusion to this paper, concerns about grizzly bear
populations are appearing in local papers amid startlingly low salmon runs in some
parts of the GBR (Hume, 2009), and the on-going fall grizzly bear hunt. Grizzly bears
(and their animal and plant food sources) do not stand still, they confound our spatial
registers (Buller, 2008, page 1593); they will move outside of protected spaces and may
be killed. Indeed grizzly bears continue to wreak havoc with regulators and scientists;
despite their large size and detectability, ``there is no practical method for estimating
bear numbers in an area as large as B.C.'' (Peek at al, 2003, page 9). BC government
estimates put the population at 16 000 bears, but independent biologists have found
that some populations are as much as 100% lower than the government estimates
(Hamilton, 2008).
Perhaps the only thing we can say with certainty about the GBR agreements is that
they will not impact every one evenly; the ever-changing geography of British Columbia
is and will likely continue to be uneven, with this unevenness strongly tied to trenchant
colonial and species divides.
Conclusion
The $20 million question for this essay is: does seeing the grizzly bear as player
``change how we understand the processes and outcomes of political struggles?''
(Hobson, 2007, page 258). Does my analysis bring us someplace new in thinking about
this region and the politics there? How?
My analysis points to how the environmental politics in the region is more than
a conflict or compromise between economic, social, and environmental priorities,
or between the human actors or institutions sitting at the negotiating table maximizing
gain and minimizing loss. While I focused narrowly on the grizzly bear, in tracing its
relationships with othersörelationships where the bear has affect, other actors came
out of the woodwork too: for example, settler histories, fear, guns, conservation science
and expertise, and private and public capital. ``Beginning explanation and exploration
with objects as social/physical actors and part of human/non human networks'',
as Robbins (2007, page 59) argues, ``better helps us to understand the geography of
political economic relationships.'' My analysis shows that what materialized in the
GBR is incredibly complex, and within the current context of British Columbia,
required an enormous gathering together, a gathering that is glossed over when
we focus only on the usual suspects with easily recognizable `power' and influence.
1154
J Dempsey
As such, my essay paints a more robust picture of regional transformation, one where
the players and especially the relationships between the players are not always predictable, not fully human, and always shifting. Environmental politics does not only
proceed from interests and values formed before the event; urban environmentalists
with bourgeois and classed interests in `wilderness' surely matter, but so do the
materialities of grizzly bears and the various ways they engage with their (often not
so friendly) companion species, humans. Grizzly bears influenced the shape of biodiversity conservation in the GBR; they were a part of reworking the shape of land use
and life on the coast of BC.
The approach I have taken adds another layer to the view that this struggle was
about differently situated humans staking out control of territory, lands, and resources,
what Clapp (2004) and Hayter (2003) call a `remapping'. It counters the strange
tendency in social sciences to exclude (or make passive) nonhumans in analyses of
environmental politics, a tendency that eviscerates a crucial piece of these struggles:
the question of ``which companion species will, and should, live and die, and how''
(Haraway, 2008, page 18). In taking this approach, I am not attempting to instil a
`biocentric' approach to the world; the politics of this region are certainly about who
gets their piece of the pie, but like other environmental struggles involving threatened
or endangered species, they are also very much about reconfiguring our relationships
with nonhumans, however imperfectly, and in this case, colored with a kind of human
extensionism (Whatmore, 1997). In making the bear visible, we are reminded that environmental politics are always also about figuring out ways to live better with difference,
to live better with our companion species, who Haraway (2008) brilliantly describes
as ``those who meet and break bread together but not without some indigestion'' (back
cover of book).
Acknowledgements. This paper benefited from the critical eyes of three anonymous reviewers,
participants at a 2007 AAG session on non-human political actors, and my University of British
Columbia and University of Toronto colleagues, especially Juanita Sundberg, Rosemary Collard,
and Trevor Barnes. Generous support from the Trudeau Foundation and the Social Science
Humanities Research Council supported this research.
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