Trophy lives

The man who introduces himself as Casey Bear is pacing quickly, flustered, having just experienced what he calls one of the most violent altercations of his life. He laughs hysterically and nervously pulls a bear mask on and off his face as he describes how a man snuck up behind him on this empty stretch of the only highway on the Queen Charlotte Islands and attempted to pull down the Stop Killing Bears banner that now hangs scrunched to one side.

A cape of faux black fur swings from his wiry frame as he straightens the banner, a task likely performed dozens of times since he launched his full-time protest of trophy bear hunting when the spring season opened on April 1. A hand-painted plywood sign nearby reads Taan Gan Yahgudang, which means “respect for bears” in Xaayda Kil – the language of the Haida people of B.C.’s most remote islands. Still interrupting himself with fits of high-pitched giggles, Casey (who is not Haida) repeats the licence plate number over and over and points down the road to where the truck carrying his adversary retreated. Although he is concerned about conservation, Casey, like most protestors I spoke to, is mainly opposed to trophy bear hunting for ethical reasons. “I think the killing for fun, for recreation, is abhorrent,” he says.

Video: Shooting a black bear

Two evenings earlier, less than a kilometre from the site of Casey’s protest, Brandie Olmstead held a glass of white wine in one hand and balanced her blond baby on her hip with the other. Brandie, a meticulous host and engaging storyteller, shrugged off the ongoing protest as she showed me around the Tlell River House – located in a former Haida fishing camp called Tlell (population 375) – which serves as a base for recreational bear hunters. “Some people just don’t have enough to do with their time.”

Her dismissal of the protest echoes that of her father-in-law Kevin Olmstead, who, with his wife Victoria, owns both of the commercial bear hunting licences for the Charlottes, as well as the lodge. “Most of these people who protest are radicals. And most of them are hypocrites,” he says. “Some people say it’s okay to fish but not to hunt. I think

The Olmsteads don’t think the opponents of the hunt are any threat to their 22-year-old outfitting company, Prophet Muskwa – though powerless radicals aren’t the only protestors. The Council of the Haida Nation (CHN) – which is part interest group, part de facto regional government – passed a resolution in 1995 to halt recreational bear hunting and in 2005 persuaded the provincial government to investigate how to stop it. Aside from an April demonstration attended by approximately 125 activists and Casey Bear’s ongoing antics, there has been little movement since then. But CHN president Guujaaw now pledges to end the hunt before the season resumes this month: “One way or another, there will be no fall hunt.”

Guujaaw isn’t forthcoming about how he plans to stop the hunt. But one should not underestimate the man who once orchestrated land and sea barricades that paralyzed two lumber sorting yards and seized millions of dollars of logs from pulp and paper superpower Weyerhaeuser. This is the same man who led the Haida to a 2004 Supreme Court of Canada ruling that requires governments to consult and accommodate First Nations about development of disputed lands – a ruling that resulted in a recent land use agreement with the provincial government that ensures the protection of roughly half of the land area of the Charlottes.

Now that the provincial government seems to be honouring its legal obligation to consult and accommodate the Haida, Guujaaw plans to reclaim control of both land and water resources and build the islands’ economy – on what remains after decades of logging, fishing and mining – so that it benefits locals, not just off-island companies. But balancing short-term economic gains with the sustainability of the economy and the environmental integrity of the Haida’s ancestral home is not an easy task. And as the CHN challenges the province on its right to issue permits to harvest resources, most sectors are facing uncertainty and political instability, including fishing, logging, tourism and, most importantly to the Olmsteads, bear hunting.

The remote group of 150 islands that constitute the Charlottes (known to both Haida and non-Haida residents as Haida Gwaii) lies 120 kilometres off B.C.’s northwest coast, 240 kilometres north of Vancouver Island. A six- to eight-hour ferry ride from Prince Rupert across the tumultuous Hecate Strait, the islands are perched on the edge of the continental shelf, with a rainforest of cedar, hemlock and huge Sitka spruce blanketing 1,000-metre mountains that rise from the ocean.

Because parts of the Charlottes were spared the glaciers of the last ice age, the islands are home to unique subspecies of flora and fauna and are sometimes referred to as the “Galapagos of Canada.” One such subspecies peculiar to the islands is Ursus americanus carlottae, the biggest black bear in the world, coveted by trophy bear hunters for their enormous skulls.

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