A former conservation officer who went against protocol and spared the lives of a pair of bear cubs near Port Hardy is making waves again.
Bryce Casavants - who is now seeking the NDP nomination for Courtney-Comox - says a BC Government report in support of maintaining the trophy hunt on grizzly bears is highly flawed, a distortion of reality, and aimed at swaying public opinion.
Speaking with Pamela McCall on CFAX 1070, Casavants says the government-commissioned report hired out-of-province scientists who estimated there are 15-thousand grizzlies in B.C.. But he says those numbers are problematic:
"When we actually look at how those population estimations are being made it's not necessarily always based on computer modeling, or what they call regression modeling. It's also, in over 30% of the cases, simply expert opinion from a wildlife manager. And the problem with this report is it takes those expert opinions as fact."
Casavants says the other issue is that trophy hunters are required to identify the sex of the bear to track how many males and females are killed But determining the sex is often difficult and even the report's authors acknowledge a high likelihood of significant percentage of error. Casavants says despite numbers that are unreliable, the authors conclude the government's management of grizzly trophy hunting has attained a high level of scientific rigor.
He questions the independence of the report's authors, and s calling on the Auditor General to press for release of all documents, communications, and costs related to the development of the report.
Next week Casavant's will submitting his own report to the Auditor General. The report will be posted to CFAX 1070's website and on Facebook.