From Landscapes of Fear to Landscapes of Co-existence

Current wildlife management practices in North America and, in this case, British Columbia, increasingly focus on human-wildlife interactions. These interactions take place, however, in an unprecedented socio-ecological context. As the third decade of the twenty-first century unfolds, the reality of us living in the age of a planetary crisis of our own making becomes more and more evident. There is broad consensus among scientists that humanity has had an impact profound enough to have tipped the Earth into a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene – the age of mankind. Or, as some scholars would grudgingly say, “the rage of inhumanity.”

If anything, the change of name is overdue. The Holocene no longer describes our current unpredictable, human-driven socio-ecological reality: a profound change in the chemistry of the atmosphere and the oceans, rising sea levels, heatwaves, shrinking wild areas and diminishing biodiversity. The change is upon us, escalating, reaching the point of no return. We have pushed our planetary boundaries of climate change, biological integrity, and land-use systems into a “zone of danger” that spells the risk of irreversible and abrupt environmental change.

We have also pushed ourselves into the realm of uncertainty and the unknown. Indeed, paradoxically, the only certainty left to us is that social-ecological systems (SESs), disrupted by human pressures, will be governed by uncertainty and unpredictability. The year 2020 gave us a glimpse of what’s ahead. Certainly, COVID-19 was unexpected, especially the scale of the pandemic – and yet, looking back, this was precisely the kind of unknown that awaits us. COVID-19 is also a lesson. The virus in its mindless scourge affirmed the importance of constant adjustments and adaptations and quick, iterative learning. Suddenly, unfathomable metamorphosed into reality, and unimaginable became all too imaginable. The way we had navigated our lives proved woefully inadequate to meet the challenge of an invisible genetic code.

In British Columbia, nothing embodies the mismatch between old strategies and new challenges more strikingly than the current wildlife management system. Designed and built in the old era, it clings to the obsolete notion of constancy and predictability in a world that reflects neither.

COVID-19 is also a warning. We must revise our thinking and let go of mental schemas that thwart our hopes of meeting dire challenges. In our dealings with nature, what once seemed to function will no longer do so. A new paradigm needs to take hold. To believe otherwise is to harbour an illusion, a costly one. As Alex Steffen, an award-winning writer, writes, “To unlock insight into the world we’re living in, it helps to remember that we’re in a new era, surrounded by systems designed and built in the old.” 

In British Columbia, nothing embodies the mismatch between old strategies and new challenges more strikingly than the current wildlife management system. Designed and built in the old era, it clings to the obsolete notion of constancy and predictability in a world that reflects neither. Human-wildlife interactions are inherently complex, and wildlife management – the phrase that, given the complexity of nature, is, in itself, a contradiction in terms– should form a tapestry interwoven from threads that are responsive to new, unpredictable realities. Susan Boonman-Berson, a researcher and an advocate for co-existence with wildlife, argues that several interlinked factors determine type of strategies that are used in managing human-wildlife interactions. The first factor purports to define boundaries between humans and wild animals and the “right” space for each. A second factor reflects the availability of continuous, detailed and complex data on individual animals, their behaviour, numbers, and humans involved. Finally, the third factor focuses on the categorization of species and individual animals.

While incorporating these factors, the current predominant wildlife management strategy fails to appreciate the critical role dynamic and unpredictable processes play in redefining the relationship between wildlife and humans. Instead, it adheres to the pre-determined notion of spaces (e.g., urban vs. wild), outdated or scarce scientific data (e.g., old population estimates, limited data on animal psychology, movement patterns through complex landscapes, adaptation strategies), and rigid, often incorrectly assigned categories (e.g., aggressive, problematic, habituated). Altogether, these blasts from the scientific past decide what is right and wrong, acceptable and not. Wild animals that transgress rigidly demarcated spaces, such as residential areas, are labelled “out of place” and dealt with through spatial exclusion (e.g., attractant management) or lethal exclusion, the latter being a weapon of choice for vaguely defined repeated offenders. Little else is tried, planned, or even contemplated. For example, since 2011, of all decisions undertaken by the BCCOS while attending reported black bear sightings, 73% has resulted in killing a bear. In other words, since 2011, we have learned nothing.

With its intellectual roots firmly in the past, wildlife management adheres to an anthropocentric and dichotomous approach. It seeks to establish a clear spatial separation between wildlife and human environments. Suburban landscapes are to be kept free of “problematic” wild animals whose encroachment into residential areas warrants urgent preventive action and severe repercussions. Such thinking exhibits willful blindness to the consequences of the world we have created. Growing human populations and rapidly expanding urban and industrial development continue to alter and fragment natural landscapes. Any attempt to hold on to rigid boundaries becomes a sheer impossibility unless we choose to eradicate all “problematic” wildlife.

Furthermore, on top of human-driven development, climate change and associated extreme weather events transform natural areas beyond recognition. In 2021, British Columbia recorded 1,556 wildfires that burned 864,637 hectares. Wild animals, including black bears, suffered immense losses of habitat and food sources. This profound disruption to their lives has pushed many of them out of the forest and into human neighbourhoods to survive. Black bears’ incursion into residential areas has become an existential choice for them.

Some bears, often injured ones or females, enter urban areas searching for places to heal or keep their cubs safe from male bears. In such cases, their presence in human neighbourhoods is likely to be temporary but unavoidable. Even if we secure all garbage and cut down all fruit trees, bears will still be there, with us. Human population growth, urban development, climate change, and seeking safety leave them no choice but to be amongst us. 

 Hundreds of bears shot dead not only impoverish wildlife populations but also corrode our collective soul.

Of course, the presence of bears in human-populated areas is not an ideal outcome. Inevitability does not equal desirability. We should not encourage black bears to enter our backyards, and it remains our responsibility to secure attractants (e.g., garbage, pet food, bird feeders, fallen fruits). However, even our best efforts will not make bears disappear. In most urban neighbourhoods, patches of natural habitat that bears use temporarily intermingle with residential areas. Total separation from wild animals is no longer an option. 

Neither is violence on our part a way to enforce this separation. Hundreds of bears shot dead not only impoverish wildlife populations but also corrode our collective soul. It is tragically ironic that we, humans, resort to actual violence to prevent hypothetical violence for which we lack supportive data. And, indeed, we do. In British Columbia, chances of sustaining an injury in an urban setting due to a bear attack barely exceed zero. For example, over the three years – between 2018 and 2020 – approximately 50,000 bear sightings were recorded by the Wildlife Alert Reporting Program (WARP). Overall, according to the collected data, there is only an approximately 0.08% chance of an encounter with a bear to turn violent or, conversely, there is a 99.92% chance that such an encounter will be entirely peaceful. Again, according to the collected data. In reality, the likelihood of sustaining an injury due to a bear attack is more infinitesimal since most sightings go unreported.

It needs not to be like this. Engendering compassion and trading separation for genuine co-existence should be an integral part of modern wildlife management policies. 

This also applies to bears living in the vicinity of human-dominated landscapes. We don’t know how many bears are there, how healthy their populations remain, and what survival-related challenges they face. And yet, this ignorance does not instill humility, caution, or restraint in people entrusted to “manage” wildlife populations. As the yearly numbers show, in urban settings, bears are shot dead with appalling frequency. They are killed with no concern for their differences or the impact their absence may have on their families or extended social groups. We treat them as interchangeable entities, devoid of individuality and complex motivational drives.

But each life has its own story. Navigating new landscapes exposes animals to multiple pressures, including human assaults, that affect their inner lives. In today’s world, as a psychologist and ecologist, Gay A. Bradshaw, argues, “it is no exaggeration to write that every bear has experienced directly or indirectly one or more traumatic events that would qualify him or her as a candidate for diagnosis of PTSD [Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder].” In spaces dominated by human development, bears are constantly yelled at, honked at, hazed, and harassed in many other ways. Some are shot at and injured. Some have witnessed the death of family members, which leaves them scarred for life. Bear cubs that saw their mother being shot might experience a radical change in their development and behaviour as they mature. And, yet there is little empathy for orphaned and other bears as they try to survive in the environment we have created for them.

Nor is there an understanding of individual personalities and their role in adapting to a new environment. For example, human-dominated landscapes may select bolder or more inquisitive bears and, perhaps, more adaptable ones. However, none of psychological or cognitive aspects are considered when armed conservation officers arrive at the scene. Matters of life and death are settled by whether a bear touched garbage or peeked into someone’s window. Our ignorance and the determination to persist in this ignorance engenders cruelty that scars both humans and wild animals.

It’s time for change. Black bears warrant a much more thorough inquiry about their emotions, behaviour, and perception of the landscape. It can be done. In Europe, researchers are already studying how learning, genetics, and developmental history co-factor in shaping individual bears’ behaviour. The collected information will help inform decisions about human-wildlife interactions. There is so much to learn and understand. All of this is vital to a world where sharing space is a norm rather than an exception. It is up to us to stop inflicting death and begin seeking knowledge, while rejecting the notion of a rigid boundary between “their” environment and “ours”.

Human-wildlife interactions require more complex approaches than the ones the current wildlife management favours. The changes we have caused to social-ecological systems necessitate new ways to deal with the natural world. We humans have chosen to build in places that were once the domain of wildlife, and it is we, not they, who are aliens there. We live in overlapping spaces with porous boundaries that cannot separate us from nature and its dwellers. Even with the best attractant control methods and a greater public awareness on how to manage them, bears will cross the limits we have defined for them. Such occurrences might be minimized but never entirely avoided. That is why, minimizing them while compassionately accepting their inevitability is crucial. Yes, having our attractants well managed helps to keep bears in the forest where their natural food resources are. However, a bear that occasionally wanders in or feeds on improperly stored garbage does not deserve to be killed.

A fed bear is a dead bear only because we have assigned death as the consequence. Neither a presumed bear food conditioning nor the statistics for human-bear encounters justify that. Ironically, the opposite seems to be true. Through repeated exposure to people, bears become less anxious and less likely to behave aggressively. Contrary to the common view, a positive correlation between exposure to humans and the extent of risk finds no support in real science.  

Overall, therefore, the word “risk” needs disentangling from aspects unrelated to it. For example, habituation and food conditioning increase solely the probability of an encounter, not the probability of an aggressive encounter. As Stringham stated, “I have had thousands of encounters with black and grizzly bears that are very careful to avoid conflicts. These animals are as smart as chimpanzees and are capable of learning to co-exist with us.” We can do the same.

Bears found in the human-dominated landscape need not end up being dead bears. Instead, they should become active co-participants in shaping the landscape in which we all live. Listening to and watching these gentle giants are good starting points. It’s possible and, perhaps, not even that difficult because bears do communicate with us. 

Whether we admit it or not, there is a sense of the ground shifting beneath our feet. A new paradigm manifests itself. As always, it is a concomitant of a new world, and it serves as both its consequence and the way to deal with coming challenges. Relations between humans and nature are not immune to the transformation. We need to discard the current notion of “wildlife management” and shift our strategies from preventing human-wildlife encounters towards understanding mechanisms that facilitate successful co-existence.

In their true meaning, words like co-existence and co-habitation mean that humans and wild animals co-shape spaces. A mutuality of effort takes place. An effort is a crucial word, as well as openness of mind. This is the only path worth taking. It’s high time for a different way of thinking to prevail, one which embraces the mystery of nature and the ongoing evolution of dynamic social-ecological systems.