Northern Ontario Environmental Issues
Reprinted from the Sudbury Star, October 14, 2004
Can you imagine restoring magnificent black bears to a huge part of their historic range in Ontario, south of cottage country and down into the Golden Horseshoe and the Greater Toronto area?
That�s the hope of a couple of northern Ontario visionaries who are more than willing to share excess bears from cottage country and parts of the north with bear lovers in the south.
The campaign, created by Murray Monk and Eldon Hawton, and supported by the Friends of Fur and the Northwestern Ontario Sportsmen�s Alliance is just getting under way.
There�s a big billboard soon to be unveiled on the Trans-Canada Highway (Highway 17) at Sudbury, actually between Sudbury and Coniston. Once unveiled, the billboard will feature a picture of Toronto�s CN Tower, plus the image of a large black bear and the words �Working Together to Re-Introduce the Black Bear to Southern Ontario.� It carries the signatures of the Friends of Fur and of the Northwestern Ontario Sportsmen�s Alliance.
Eldon Hawton (who splits his time between Sudbury and the North Bay area) is president of the Friends of Fur. He�s an active angler and hunter, a former trapper and a veteran worker in the fur industry. He shares honours for the billboard with legendary trapper Murray Monk, a regional vice-president with the Fur Managers of Ontario who lives on his trapline 85 miles northeast of Thunder Bay.
Both men say the campaign is quite serious. And they deny any knowledge of a vaguely similar �proposal� written 300 years ago by satirist Jonathan Swift. In 1729, the author of Gulliver�s Travels penned �A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to their Parents or the Country and for Making them Beneficial to the Public.�
Swift�s modest proposal was that the children of poor families in Ireland be fattened up, sold like livestock and fed to Ireland�s rich landowners, contributing to the economic well-being of the nation.
Swift�s proposals were largely ignored in Ireland and Britain. Hawton and Monk deny any link between Swift�s satiric �Modest Proposal� and their own �Proposal to Equally Share Ontario�s Excess Bears.�
Details of that proposal are to be found in full on the Friends of Fur website www.friends-of-fur.org
They�re asking natural resources minister David Ramsay to get behind a program to relocate the north�s surplus bears on historic range in southern Ontario. They believe there�s lots of room for bears in area codes such as 416, 905 and 519.
Hawton and Monk cite MNR�s bear density map used in its Bear Watch materials as proof that bears aren�t fairly distributed, with densities of 0 bears per square kilometre in much of the south.
�We believe the population density of bears should be equally shared with other people living in Ontario. According to the MNR there�s plenty of room for all of us. The McGuinty government should seriously consider the plan to assist the current natural migration of bears moving south, �returning to their historical former range�. This would allow more Ontarians to equally share the excess bears.�
Hawton and Monk figure it could be as successful a wildlife reintroduction as the return of the wild turkey and the elk to Ontario. They too were species largely extirpated over much of their original range south of cottage country. Hawton and Monk can foresee an upsurge in ecotourism with bear viewing at the CN Tower, Queen�s Park and maybe along the Don Valley Parkway.
They�re hoping that the Ontario government and the ministry of natural resources will fund the transfers with the $900,000 per year it is currently spending on its Bear Wise campaign, aimed at teaching folks from cottage country northward how to co-exist with bears.
Monk, reached by �tree-phone� (radio mobile) at his remote home on his trapline 85 miles northeast of Thunder Bay, says there is lots of suitable habitat and food for bears in the south.
�They�ve got the same landfills, garbage cans, school yards, barbeques and bird feeders that we have in North Bay, Thunder Bay and Timmins. We�d be glad to share our bears with our neighbours in the south.�
Hawton and Monk are hoping that animal rights groups such as Bear With Us, the Animal Alliance and the International Fund for Animal Welfare will raise funds to support a government backed bear re-introduction program in the south.
�Perhaps Robert Schad (the southern industrialist who funded the campaign to end the spring bear hunt in Ontario) will be willing to contribute funds to bring the black bear back to its historic range in southern Ontario,� says Monk.
Hawton figures that feeding stations for hungry bears in the fruitlands and vineyards of Niagara and Prince Edward County would be a major eco-tourism attraction. Both regions have abundant crops of fresh fruit, apples, pears, peaches that can be shared with black bears, Hawton says. And, he adds, northern bears accustomed to slim pickings on wild grape crops would be delighted by the vineyards of the south.
�They wouldn�t even have to climb a tree to eat,� suggests Hawton.
To save money, Hawton and Monk figure that transportable bears could be trapped from landfill site �feeding stations� in the north. Then, in the south, surplus food from restaurants, hospitals, nursing homes and households could be dumped by the hundreds of tons, in southern landfill sites to provide an adequate on-going food source for the transported bears.
�Relocated bears would have very little reason to leave these feeding stations and would most likely be content to live around these landfill sites from early spring right through to hibernation.�
That�s where Hawton and Monk see the possibilities for eco-tourism with the southern bear feeding stations drawing both bears and European/Asian/American tourists eager to see �real� bears.
Both Hawton and Monk are insistent that their relocation plans are all open and above board. They say they do not want to be associated with rumors currently heard in the north about disgruntled tourist outfitters and northern residents making plans for an illicit mass release of black bears at Queen�s Park.
Hawton and Monk hope that the Ontario government, just back to work after a long recess, will add its trillium logo to the billboard and give its blessing (and some cash) for a massive bear relocation effort.
�It is our desire to stop the indiscriminate slaughter of bears,� says Monk. �As nuisance animals they are destroyed and wasted with no concern for cubs. There is an alarming increase in the numbers of orphaned cubs directly attributable to the current government�s policy of elimination instead of management. We are offering the McGuinty government a workable alternative that is better for bears than the current kill and waste scheme.�
Gary Ball may be contacted at
Note to editors: I think the satiric nature of this campaign and this column are self-evident. However you might want to add some sort of warning or disclaimer for readers. Humour is the intent�Gary Ball
