ROB MURRAY: I’m speaking with John E. Marriott. A lot of people know you around town as a wildlife photographer. You’re also one of the co-founders of something called the EXPOSED Wildlife Conservancy. What is this?

JOHN E. MARRIOTT: It is an environmental nonprofit aimed at giving a voice to our apex predators. We’re particularly concerned with grizzly bears, mountain lions, wolverines, and wolves in Western Canada.

RM: What led you to start this Conservancy?

JM: Being out there photographing for the last 25 years, I’ve really started to notice how our big predators, the large carnivores, don’t really get a fair shake in how our wildlife is managed right now. Our wildlife management systems in Alberta in particular are really skewed towards the hunting trapping side of things, and there’s very little thought given to what the rest of the public wants. Right now the large predators are managed so that the numbers are kept down by and large throughout the province, particularly with wolves. I  want to see some regulation changes to things like snaring and hunting. For instance, you can hunt wolves almost year round. You can shoot up a lactating female, you can shoot a wolf pup, and it doesn’t cost a single dollar to go out and shoot a wolf. You don’t even have to have a hunting license in Alberta to shoot a wolf. These kinds of things I find really unfair and I want to get some better regulations in place over the long run through the Conservancy.

RM: I know, you’re really keyed in on the news stories coming from the Alberta government regarding grizzly bear populations. On the surface, it sounds like good news.

JM: It is great news. It really is something to celebrate because back in 2010 the Alberta grizzly bear was actually listed as a threatened species. Now that we’ve started doing these population inventories which is what this is, the second round in BMAs three and four which is basically the areas just east of Jasper National Park and just east of Banff National Park. We’ve had a doubling of the population in both of these areas. That is really fantastic news for a species that we’re trying to recover and eventually would love to get off the threatened list, although we’re still a long ways from that.

RM: Taking a species off the threatened list is obviously the end goal and great news, but it also comes with some risks, doesn’t it?

JM: In Alberta, the big risk is that we may reopen the hunt again. The Environment Minister has already hinted very strongly at that. In fact, a brand new press release came out from his office saying that the grizzly bear has now recovered and the population is thriving. I certainly wouldn’t go that far. We’re still not even at a thousand grizzly bears total in the province, and to get taken off the threatened list we actually need to have not just a thousand grizzly bears but a thousand mature reproducing adults. We’re a long, long ways from that. We’re probably only about halfway. When we say that populations have doubled in a couple of these bear management areas, it’s really just a stepping stone towards recovery. We have a long ways to go and we really shouldn’t be even talking about things like a grizzly bear hunt at this point. We have a lot of other recovery efforts that could be made, and a lot of mitigation to help us cope with this and to help the bear populations continue to grow.

RM: What do you see your role and the role of EXPOSED Wildlife Conservancy in this issue?

JM: I think EXPOSED has a really key role to play in helping to educate people. I don’t think people are really aware of just how dire the population status of grizzly bears in the province got in the early 2000s. We were down to about 670 grizzly bears. The province and the people of the province have been working very hard, advocates like myself, trying to get better coexistence going on the province and communication and education. I think that’s where EXPOSED really can play a role, making people aware of what’s going on, and also countering some of the rhetoric coming out of the Environment Minister’s office right now. The population is not thriving. We’ve had two different areas where the population has increased, but we have other areas in the province when population is actually quite a bit lower than what they had initially estimated. We still have a long way to go.

Filed under: Bears, Canmore, Wildlife