Conservation of Grizzly Bears is the overriding goal which guides a strategy of use and enjoyment for both hunting and non-hunting use by the public. Hunting quotas are set for three year periods in each management area. Quotas are assessed and recalculated annually based on up-to-date statistics on numbers of hunters, harvest, unnatural mortality and inventory information. Hunting organizations do not set hunting seasons or determine quotas. The Wildlife Branch decides where, when and how hunting will be permitted.

A recent study of Grizzly Bear deaths in BC, Alberta and the US demonstrated that adult female Grizzlies had higher survival rates in BC, where Grizzlies are hunted, than in those areas of the US and Alberta where hunting seasons are closed, such as Banff, Waterton, and Glacier National Parks (McLellan et al. 1999). This is attributed to the conservative BC practice of limiting the female harvest to one third of total hunter kills.

In the same study, agency control of problem bears was the major cause of Grizzly Bear losses in nearly all jurisdictions, but was highest in areas where there are no legal hunting seasons. BC has higher rates of detecting Grizzly Bear deaths caused by humans than in the US where only 54% of deaths were detected.

In BC, 67% to 83% of Grizzly Bear deaths were detected. This same study of 99 bears which died, or a sample of 388 radio-collared Grizzlies studied between 1975 and 1997, showed that poaching played only a minor role in bear mortality in any area. In fact, none were killed by poachers in BC and this study also shows that wounding losses by hunters did not play a role in any bear deaths in BC.

Grizzly bears have been continuously hunted by non-aboriginal occupants of BC for nearly 200 years. In areas without extensive human development, a number of Grizzly Bear populations which were locally over-hunted have undergone a rapid recovery in the past 30 years in response to conservative hunting regulations.

How many grizzlies are harvested in comparison to the total grizzly population?

By 1968, hunting with the use of bait was prohibited, seasons in the southern two thirds of the interior of the province were either closed year round, or opened only during the spring, and females with young, as well as their young, were protected.

By 1996, all Grizzly Bear hunting in the province by residents was regulated by limited entry hunting (LEH) and all hunting by non-residents was regulated under government administered quotas issued to licensed guide-outfitters. LEH limits the number of hunters and the length of the season for each particular wildlife management unit. This allows greater control than open hunting seasons. Where the habitat remains suitable, nearly all grizzly populations have fully recovered to their historic levels, in response to carefully regulated annual hunting seasons.