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One pioneering grizzly and her two cubs appear on Vancouver Island

hakaimagazine.com

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Re: One pioneering grizzly and her two cubs appear on Vancouver Island

#51

Post by sandworm101 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #26

So are these Grizzlies now an "invasive species" on Vancouver Island? Explain why or why not you think so!

No. Species are not static. Large predators like grizzlies and wolves move in and out of areas over decades as they alter prey relatioships. It is hard to describe how vast and unmonitored this part of BC actually is. It is comparabke to the empty parts of alaska, but without the roads. Nobody believes that this is the first, or last, mother grizzly on the island. It may be the first known, or first recorded in the last century, but it will have happened before multiple times. It will be nothing new to nature, not in the long run.

Another island near vancouver (bowen) is said to have no black bears. But given the population density of bears surrounding the island, Bowen could have black bears instantly. All it takes is one pregnant female getting scared enough to make the swim. If they arent there now, they likely were there in centuries past.

Re: One pioneering grizzly and her two cubs appear on Vancouver Island

#52

Post by arcticfox »

grecy wrote: post #8
LilBytes wrote: post #6

Might make for an interesting development on future seasons of Alone if Grizzles become a common presence on Vancouver Island. My understanding of read materials so far is the amount of work gone into the program to risk profile danger was incredible, the change in risk profile of the addition of Grizzles on top of wolves and black bears would be quite an adjustment.

My Yukon buddy was the safety officer/local guy when they did alone up on great slave lake in the NWT.( near Yellowknife) He hung around all the time with his hunting rifle and a 12 gauge loaded with slugs to make sure nobody got eaten. He got in trouble for sharing smokes and giving fire to the contestants a few times.

The smokes don’t seem like that big of a deal but the fire seems like it is a complete disaster for fairness. That’s actually pretty horrific - the other contestants out there working and suffering their asses off to survive and he gave a huge leg up to arbitrary competitors? I should hope he got in serious trouble - can you imagine an official in a sports competition casually messing with the game w/ $1M on the line???

Re: One pioneering grizzly and her two cubs appear on Vancouver Island

#53

Post by jvanderbot »

arcticfox wrote: post #52
grecy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Yukon buddy was the safety officer/local guy when they did alone up on great slave lake in the NWT.( near Yellowknife) He hung around all the time with his hunting rifle and a 12 gauge loaded with slugs to make sure nobody got eaten. He got in trouble for sharing smokes and giving fire to the contestants a few times.

The smokes don’t seem like that big of a deal but the fire seems like it is a complete disaster for fairness. That’s actually pretty horrific - the other contestants out there working and suffering their asses off to survive and he gave a huge leg up to arbitrary competitors? I should hope he got in serious trouble - can you imagine an official in a sports competition casually messing with the game w/ $1M on the line…

I regret to say that the show is probably only concerned with the appearance of fairness, as viewed by edited footage post-hoc. Not the experience of the contestants so much.

For example, I previously believed the contestants to be truly alone, in that each potential encounter with bears would be hugely risky. But now I know that was a minimal risk because a bodyguard was close enough to intervene, and was probably monitoring grizzly activity in the area.

The mental changes that happen to a contestant when they can even see someone nearby kind of invalidates the whole premise a little.

Re: One pioneering grizzly and her two cubs appear on Vancouver Island

#54

Post by xrd »

I'm sad this magazine will be ending soon. They do such great writing.

I was at orcas Island recently. I wanted to have my kids hear some good stories about the place, so I started asking anyone I met, "tell me a story about a dangerous animal attack here!"

Everyone would just say, "hmm, there aren't any dangerous animals..."

Then, one person said. "Well, there was that person that died from a bee sting."

Then someone said "Sometimes the elk swim across the sound and come on the island." I decided I would tell my kids they came over to attack people but I had no evidence that was true.

There were reports of bears getting confused and swimming over and they are quickly relocated.

The most dangerous animal apparently is the mink. In the seventies a rogue employee at a mink farm released a bunch of them, and now they have overrun the place. And they can be vicious hunters. The person that told me that said he had a recent picture in the local newspaper of a mink that went into the ocean and captured an eel. His picture is of the mink rising from the waters with that eel in its mouth.

Re: One pioneering grizzly and her two cubs appear on Vancouver Island

#55

Post by scooke »

dyauspitr wrote: post #35
grecy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Yukon buddy was the safety officer/local guy when they did alone up on great slave lake in the NWT.( near Yellowknife) He hung around all the time with his hunting rifle and a 12 gauge loaded with slugs to make sure nobody got eaten. He got in trouble for sharing smokes and giving fire to the contestants a few times.

Apparently the great slave lake was named after the indigenous dene people, who were called the slave tribe by their enemy tribe the Cree.

No need for the word "tribe" here. They are the Dene. They are the Slave. They are the Cree. we don't say "the German tribe" (of Europe), or the Swiss tribe. This term typically is used to describe a smaller group belonging to a larger group. In this case, the larger group is subconsciously thought of Indians, or even First Nations, or Aboriginals. But the Cree, Slave Dene and any other number of nations are not tribes . They are nations. So, the Cree... The Slave.... The Dene....

Re: One pioneering grizzly and her two cubs appear on Vancouver Island

#56

Post by karaterobot »

derefr wrote: post #28
karaterobot wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they swam there, no. Invasive species have to be introduced by humans, by definition! The effect of grizzlies on the island ecosystem is unknown, and that may be more of what you're talking about.

> If they swam there, no. Invasive species have to be introduced by humans, by definition! So what do you call it if humans introduce a species to an island A that's really close to another island B — and then the species happens to make the short hop to island B on its own? In a causal sense, that species would not have made it to island B if not for us introducing it to island A.

The article says they probably swam across the Johnstone Straight, from the mainland. There's no mention whatsoever of introducing grizzlies to any nearby island.

If you're asking hypothetically, I'd guess it comes down to whether the islands were separate ecosystems, but Wikipedia would be a much better source than me.

Re: One pioneering grizzly and her two cubs appear on Vancouver Island

#57

Post by grecy »

arcticfox wrote: post #52
grecy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Yukon buddy was the safety officer/local guy when they did alone up on great slave lake in the NWT.( near Yellowknife) He hung around all the time with his hunting rifle and a 12 gauge loaded with slugs to make sure nobody got eaten. He got in trouble for sharing smokes and giving fire to the contestants a few times.

The smokes don’t seem like that big of a deal but the fire seems like it is a complete disaster for fairness. That’s actually pretty horrific - the other contestants out there working and suffering their asses off to survive and he gave a huge leg up to arbitrary competitors? I should hope he got in serious trouble - can you imagine an official in a sports competition casually messing with the game w/ $1M on the line…

I think you’re thinking this show is a lot more real than it actually is. It is scripted reality TV, not serious, not real.

He said he and the camera crew talked to the contestants all the time, despite them being shown to be “alone”

I think he said he gave fire to people that already had it anyway and theirs just went out.

Re: One pioneering grizzly and her two cubs appear on Vancouver Island

#58

Post by dagmx »

fbarred wrote: post #39
dagmx wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says that grizzlies did use to exist on the island, so they’d not be invasive

By that definition, horses that were introduced to North America by humans in 16th century are not invasive because they existed in North America 10,000 years ago.

The article also does say that Grizzlies come and go, that the significance here is it’s a female with cubs. So it’s not like grizzlies aren’t present at all on the island.

Of course there could be a boom but apex predators tend to not be super boomy since they’d outstrip their own resources first.

Re: One pioneering grizzly and her two cubs appear on Vancouver Island

#59

Post by cco »

morsch wrote: post #45
cco wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By what definition? Humans being involved didn't seem common in definitions I found.

An invasive species is an introduced species that harms its new environment. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_species An introduced species , alien species, exotic species, adventive species, immigrant species, foreign species, non-indigenous species, or non-native species is a species living outside its native distributional range, but which has arrived there by human activity, directly or indirectly, and ei…

> The term "invasive" is poorly defined and often very subjective.

I too read the Wikipedia article and this sentence prompted me to survey a few other places. Federal law in the US for instance.

Your quoted definition doesn't appear in the article covering _invasive_ species, only in "introduced species" which of course implies a human introduced them.

Re: One pioneering grizzly and her two cubs appear on Vancouver Island

#60

Post by morsch »

cco wrote: post #59
morsch wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An invasive species is an introduced species that harms its new environment. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_species An introduced species , alien species, exotic species, adventive species, immigrant species, foreign species, non-indigenous species, or non-native species is a species living outside its native distributional range, but which has arrived there by human activity, directly or indirectly, and ei…

> The term "invasive" is poorly defined and often very subjective. I too read the Wikipedia article and this sentence prompted me to survey a few other places. Federal law in the US for instance. Your quoted definition doesn't appear in the article covering _invasive_ species, only in "introduced species" which of course implies a human introduced them.

The first paragraph is Wikipedia's definition for invasive species as a kind of introduced species with additional attributes. It's the first sentence in the article.

US federal law might be different, I wouldn't know.

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