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What We're Doing

 

Hope Mountain Centre for Outdoor Learning collaborates with other groups working on grizzly bear conservation in southwestern BC like the Wildlife Branch of BC Ministry of Forests, the Joint Nations Grizzly Bear Initiative and Okanagan Nation Alliance - Grizzly Bear Recovery to share information.

 

We encourage reporting of sightings from the general public by distributing informational posters at retail outlets, trailheads, public buildings and other facilities. Sighting reports are screened by trained personnel and forwarded on to partner organizations like BC government biologists who may follow up with field verification and utilize information in their work.

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​Why?

 

Grizzly bears are extremely rare in most of southwest BC, particularly in the Cascades and the eastern slopes of the Coast Range. The public is being asked to report sightings because every individual grizzly is important to these populations.

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The BC government lists grizzly bears in Cascades, Garibaldi/Pitt River, Stein/Nahatlatch Rivers and Squamish/Lillooet populations as “threatened.”  Estimates indicate that there are fewer than 40 grizzly bears on the eastern slopes of the BC Coast Range and the Cascades in the area stretching from Lillooet to I-90 in Washington State, USA.

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Grizzly bears are slow to reproduce and slow to recover from low numbers. BC biologists and their counterparts from the US have worked together for years on grizzly bear science and recovery. We hope to invest citizens in a similar vein through citizen science monitoring.

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Every verified sighting contributes to our knowledge about SW BC’s grizzly bears which in turn helps us understand how vulnerable they are to local extinction. Hikers, climbers, hunters, fishers, photographers, loggers and ranchers – anyone who is recreating or working in the mountains can potentially contribute. The more solid information people have about grizzly bear abundance and distribution, the better their ability to monitor bear recovery.