This excellent article on resource extraction threats to the Canadian Flathead appeared in the Wednesday, January 2, 2008 edition of The Tyee, an online daily based in British Columbia. This is part one of two. The second deals with efforts to establish the Flathead as a national park . . .

Bruce McLellan has caught more than 150 grizzlies in the Flathead Valley in the past 29 years, some more than once, but he still vividly remembers his first capture.

“We got really excited when we drove in and could see this big bear… bouncing around,” McLellan recalls. Then alarm set in — the tree that had anchored the snare was gone. “He’d gnawed it down!”

Luckily, the cable remained attached to the stump and the young biologist soon had the 290-kilogram bear tranquillized and radio-collared. It was the start of what’s become one of the world’s longest-running, most in-depth studies of this species.

Since 1978, McLellan — now a provincial Ministry of Forests senior wildlife habitat ecologist and University of British Columbia adjunct professor — hasn’t missed a year in the Flathead. His research shows that this 1,575-square-kilometre watershed in British Columbia’s southeast corner has the highest documented density of grizzlies in inland North America: 65 to 80 for every 1,000 square kilometres. Only salmon-fed coastal grizzlies occur at higher densities.

“What’s special about the Flathead,” McLellan says, “is that it’s a big, wide valley with no people living in it, so the bears can use the whole valley bottom and do what bears do when there’s no people around. That’s what makes it unique, more than the density.

Read the entire article . . .