As Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government continues to flood the zone with daily news releases announcing dubious and dangerous policy changes, it’s very hard to keep up and provide measured analysis. That’s the idea. The UCP spins it their way on Day 1, and by Day 2 the understaffed and layoff-beset media moves on the next announcement. Voters often remember only the spin. The day before yesterday, Stephen Harper was named as the Smith Government’s highly inappropriate choice for chair of the AIMCo board, turning the Crown-owned pension management company into the investment arm of the UCP. Yesterday, the UCP announced a plan to lower the highest auto insurance rates in Canada by allowing private insurance companies to raise them even more and then deprive folks injured in auto crashes the ability to sue for compensation. Sorry folks, you’ll just have to take what the government says you can have! Meanwhile, though, who’s paying attention to the UCP’s irresponsible plan to allow trappers to kill as many fur-bearing animals as they feel like, using the bizarre argument that killing them will help us know how many are left? Lorne Fitch, that’s who. “When the last animal is trapped we will have a definitive population number,” says the Professional Biologist, a regular guest contributor to this blog. “Zero.” DJC
By Lorne Fitch
There’s established wildlife science and now there is the “science” of the “minister of hunting and fishing” related to fur-bearer management. Asked why he decided to let trappers kill as many wolverines, lynx, otters and other fur-bearers as they want, Todd Loewen said it was to get a better idea of how many there are.
Dead fur-bearing animals don’t tell you how many there are. They tell you how many there were.
I’ve pored over my old text books on wildlife management, which state “The methods of estimating numbers of animals have now achieved a level of sophistication worthy of a mature science.” It’s not clear how this latest decision by Mr. Loewen, whose official title is the minister of forestry and parks, meets the sophistication test.
If this is the new “science,” you might see where it can lead. When the last animal is trapped we will have a definitive population number – zero.
Departmental staff have offered no scientific rationale for this new population inventory technique. That’s because there is none. Alberta’s new emperor of “science” is making this up!
Because wolverines have low population densities, there have long been concerns about trapping them. This species has low reproduction rates and, like lynx, are severely limited by human activity.
For similar reasons, lynx, river otters and fishers have had limited trapping quotas imposed as a precautionary measure.
But these are now all out the window. The minister says he can’t defend the quota system because it isn’t based on science. It’s not clear why he thinks that killing more of these animals in an uncontrolled experiment by trappers doesn’t also need to be based on science.
Mr. Loewen has offered no explanation of what kinds of data will be collected in this trapping free-for-all, how it will be scientifically rigorous or objective, or how this will answer the questions he seems to have. Nor does he explain why evidence-based research using a variety of proven animal census methods is somehow inferior to simply increasing the body count.
Years of research and monitoring have gone into understanding the biology of these creatures and setting quotas for trapping. There are science-based studies ongoing to understand wolverine populations. If the minister really wanted science, he would have made himself aware of this information before lurching into a trap of his own design.
Actual, rather than invented, science has shown that populations of these fur-bearers can be naturally low, and careful management is required to avoid overharvest. It wasn’t that long ago that many fur-bearing species were nearly extirpated by over-trapping.
Biologists outside of the department are aghast at this slippage of wildlife species management into the cronyism and amateur hour. Of all of the possible opportunities for consultation, only the Alberta Trappers Association was involved in this decision. Their support for this charade makes that organization seem mercenary and short-sighted.
If the minister seriously wants decisions on fish and wildlife management to be based on science, he needs to listen to his own professional staff, who are employed to use science to provide defensible answers. A substantial knowledge base also exists in academic institutions.
An honest respect for science might help to temper the minister’s vigilante approach to problem wildlife, arbitrary tinkering with the cougar hunting quota, allowing his business associates undue influence in ungulate management, throwing lake fisheries open to aggressive harvesting after a painful period of population restoration, and now, killing rare fur-bearing animals willy-nilly to get a better count.
None of this is science. It’s not evidence-based management of wildlife resources. Instead it is a negative reaction to science – ignoring professional advice in favour of random observations by fellow hunting guides and coffee shop “solutions” cooked up by privileged insiders with vested interests.
This minister needs to stop listening to the voices in his head and the ones whispering in his ear. They’re wrong! And they sure aren’t science.
Lorne Fitch is a Professional Biologist, a retired Fish and Wildlife Biologist and a former Adjunct Professor with the University of Calgary. He is the author of Streams of Consequence and Travels Up the Creek: A Biologist’s Search For a Paddle.
Hello DJC nd fellow commenters,
As I mentioned previously, the Minister’s derogatory remark about a few biologists running around as his representation of the science community shows his contempt for anyone who might have an education and a true interest in studying wildlife to come to well-supported scientific conclusions.
As I also mentioned, it reminded me of the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans permitting over-harvesting of cod to the point that John Crosbie, the Minister of DFO at the time, imposed a moratorium on cod fishing. And, even to this day, the cod population has not recovered enough to permit a commercially viable cod fishery.
In parallel way, you would think that the trapping industry would be interested in retaining species at a viable level to, perhaps, allow some trapping of these endangered species, particularly wolverine, at a later date or, at the very least, to enable the population to reach a number that will allow enough animals to have offspring to continue the species in its niche in the ecosystem.
None of the policy changes the UCP government has in store for wildlife is intended to benefit wildlife.
Wildlife exists solely for human use. For the Bible tells us so.
Welcome back to the 1950s. Or is it the 1750s?
Let the Alberta Trappers Association decide Alberta’s wildlife policy.
Let offroaders decide Alberta’s protections for the backcountry.
Let resort owners decide Alberta’s policy on parks.
Let insurance companies decide Alberta’s auto insurance policy.
Let fossil-gas power generators decide Alberta’s policy on renewable energy.
Let O&G companies decide Alberta’s climate policy.
Let logging companies decide Alberta’s wildfire prevention policy.
Let the government take over Albertans pension funds to derisk projects in Alberta that find it difficult to get financing, i.e., companies and projects the market won’t touch.
See a pattern here?
Government of, by, and for corporations.
So obvious yet rural Alberta voters are so stupid. The rural protesters that invaded Edmonton over anti-vaxx idiocy were some of the dumbest people I have ever met. Their kids are even dumber.
This is not exclusively an Alberta phenomenon. DJC
This was not Todd Loewens idea since the light does not shine very bright in that turnip of a head. This latest idiotic UCP idea no doubt comes from one of a couple of lobbies. It either came from the lobby that promotes this mendacity – Genesis 1:26-31 American Standard Version (ASV) And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
The other possibility is the idea comes from the lobby that considers killing these magnificent creations and afterwards sticking their heads on a wall makes you more of a manly man. In 2024 no one kills a wolverine because they are starving.
@Dr Fitch Given the gutting of staff positions that started with Klein, how many professionals are actually left to consult?
@Mr. Climenhaga And how to fix this situation? Brace yourself, it’s not easy.
Educate yourself on the issues. I find our host intellectually honest, but everyone has biases. Seek out other sources, other viewpoints. Dont be a “sheeple”, think for yourself!
Get involved. Email your MLA (especially if they are UCP). Phone them. Get party membership (mine is AB NDP). Most of all, exercise your sovereign right … vote. Every. Single. Election.
My uncle served in WWII. He crossed Juno Beach. My son in law is currently serving. In Latvia. I’d rather pee on an electric fence before disrespecting them by not voting.
I understand honouring the sacrifice at Juno Beach but “serving in Latvia”, supporting a government that deports elderly Latvian russian speakers just for being a russian speaker is somehow “UnCanadian” to me given our two official language policy.
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-latvia-residents-deportation/33116047.html
Because of Canada’s foreign policy and government being co-opted by the US and NATO, and the ongoing Canadian support for the Israeli Zionist and Ukrainian Fascist governments and their suppression of minorities and the support of this state of affairs by all major Canadian Political Parties, regretfully I cannot find it in my heart to vote.
Good. You failed on the educated part.
Well the CPC is certainly all in on the Russians, or would be if they had the guts to admit it. Perhaps you can bring yourself to vote for them, since Russia would appear to be where your loyalty mostly lies.
Major Canadian Political Parties support the Zionists because most Canadians still do. Until we snap out of that, there’s not much point in complaining.
It’s hard to keep up with these awful people. I read that Wolverine was born near Cold Lake, maybe he could help. Or at least make hunting a real sport.
Thank you for that image of Todd Loewen showing us his beaver.
Can we call the premier Dodo Danielle, not because she’s a dodo bird in the banyan tree, but because she’s hellbent on driving species to extinction, even the human ones, with her policies including Trump’s “drill, baby, drill”?
https://youtu.be/-bFp2DPP_ko?feature=shared
Trapping gets the “Premier’s” attention and action? Is Davey Crocket now our minister of jokes? By the way, as someone who has spent quite a bit of time out of doors, I credit Wolverines and Lynx as highly intelligent for their obvious reluctance to come anywhere near humans!
Lorne Fitch’s response to this astonishingly ignorant UCP policy regarding wildlife “management” is right on the money. Total incompetents are in charge, to the detriment of Alberta’s endangered and iconic species. Seriously, any high school class could do a better job running the Ministry of Forestry and Parks than Todd Loewen. What exactly is his mandate? Has he read it? Can he read?
A few years ago we were on holiday in Ireland and found ourselves in a pub in a small village mingling with the locals. They were friendly, especially when they found out we were Canadians. A TV was on by the bar and there was a nature show on- unusual because everywhere else horse-racing or soccer was the name of the game. There was a documentary on wolverines, and a couple of the local Irishmen watching yelled, “What the #&?! is that?” They had never heard of wolverines before. They repeated the name of the animal to themselves and each other. Their reaction and the animal’s name pronounced in their Irish brogue was amusing, but made us realize how special our part of the world is and how much we take it for granted. Sometimes you have to go away to appreciate what you have. It will be an unforgivable act of criminal negligence if the last person to ever see a Wolverine in Alberta will be a taxidermist. Our children and grandchildren-this province is their legacy not Todd Loewen’s nor the UCP’s.
It has occurred to me that the UCP government is setting little fires everywhere to distract from the big arson taking place- the theft of our Canada Pensions. But, is that giving them too much credit? A rational person looks for rationale explanations when the world seems to be turning on its head. Are they drunk with power and just sticking it to everyone? Like Trump, is Smith just putting the worst person she can in charge of every portfolio? Is it all of these things?
All I know is our province may never recover from being run by these dunces unless we find a way to push back, and hard. All Albertans have to pay attention to what the UCP are doing and say, “What the #&?! is that?”
Give it time Betts, the Irish won’t be the only ones who don’t know what a wolverine is.
What the f**k is it with this party of degenerates and their fixation with killing animals??
I am just sick about this crazy idea. We are probably the only people we know who have ever seen a wolverine in the wild. It was pretty exciting to spot one on the river bank as we paddled by. I’m not necessarily against trapping and we appreciated the young fellow that took out a bunch of the beavers that were flooding our access on our property. But this is disgusting.
Is there no way we can stop this bunch from raping our land and wildlife in every way possible?
The kind of exclusive “redoubt” the UCP’s Take-Back-Alberta faction dreams of establishing would be ecologically—including demographically— artificial. Like the aspired US redoubts of past and present— the Mormons’ “Deseret” of mid-to-late 19th century and more the recent “Greater Idaho” and the “American Redoubt Movement” (envisioned for Montana but some permutations include part or all of adjacent states like Idaho and Wyoming) where, presumably, eligible White Christians would ‘un-invite’ anyone without those qualifications—, TBA’s envisioned autonomous zone or, in some permutations, full-on independent Wexit secession zone, must also be ‘eco-cleansed’ in order to protect supposedly endangered ‘stand-your-ground’ gun-rights and anti-vax crusaders in a kind of feral-man-life preserve where adherents will be free to worship without alleged persecution from deep state government. It follows that such a state would be unnatural.
Of course the spare-cloth provinces, not confederated until 1905, have their own tradition of redoubterism, for examples: indigenous Plains nations, Sioux and Cheyanne, refuged in the Cypress Hills from the US Cavalry while Blood, Blackfoot and Assiniboin nations retreated westward before the wave of white settlement from Canada, Britain, and Eastern Europe; Métis refugees from the 1875 Red River Rebellion fled west toward the high prairie to make a last stand in Saskatchewan during the Northwest Rebellion of 1885; having difficulty attracting settlers to the trackless, unorganized, remote and harsh Canadian Plains, Canada accepted various religious communalists whose ethoi were effectively ready-made redoubterism of a kind which sought retreat from the modern world to protect, in sterilized self-sufficiency, their subcultural ways of life. Certain Mormons, too, migrated into the North-West Territory’s Provisional District of Alberta after their Brigham Young faction lost its battle to preserve polygamy in the new state of Utah in 1890, its abolition one of the terms of confederation with the USA— 15 years before Alberta’s confederation with Canada (presumably they wanted to continue practicing ‘plural marriage’ in an unorganized region where bigamy laws were not yet enforceable, probably continuing after 1905, but with discretion afforded by high-prairie remoteness). This background tradition is therefore easily reawakened, as it has been most recently by TBA, the UCP’s controlling faction.
No matter how big, like Deseret which would have covered most of the western American states, or small like a circled wagon laager, it takes extraordinary effort to keep redoubt proselytes sweet and to invigilate what is a state of the human mind, not of nature. Modern-day redoubters reject modernity, despite the many benefits it provides. They refer to holy scripture to rationalize their increasing disbelief in random occurrences and their subscription to any number of “conspiracy theories” which might be convenient to their movement at a given moment. That is, they resort to narratological technique by referring to the mythological handbook par excellence, the Holy Bible. They depend heavily on the Creator to smite their enemies—or, failing that, at least cleaning up their mess whenever they get in a scrape which, as we have seen (and will again), is virtually guaranteed to happen a lot. Thus the priority is to craft a persuasive mythos—a sort of “Earth-First!—we’ll-despoil-the-rest-of-the-planets- later” ethos that’s impressive to the faithful and as easy for them to remember as a tiresome Poilievre slogan.
It’s not primarily about wiping out endangered wildlife, but by invoking certain mythological buzzwords like “science” (schools in the Redoubt will teach Creationism instead), certain ideas like wildlife—which rhymes with “environmentalists” (a “woke” evil which blasphemes The Rapture rejoinder to ecological concerns), notions of “freedom” which are bulwarks against government biology expertise, and “hunting” which reminds proselytes, priapismically, of ‘guns,’ thence ‘right-to-carry-guns,’ thence ‘stand-your-ground-with-guns’—and, voila!—you got a solid soup stock to which flavourings of slogan, paean, demonization, and of course, cocking a snook at “The Other” may be added. These techniques pervade UCP-TBA discourse and thinking in every field of administration, governance, and federal liaison.
In short, it’s demagoguery which works just fine on MAGA-North’s sanitized world of non-random, totally artificially intelligent design—that is, the redoubt from the real world which stopped making sense to them ever since they were convinced that Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins conspired to reintroduce timber wolves into Yellowstone National Park.
Very unfortunately the hare-brained open season on endangered wildlife species like low-density, low-fecundity wolverines and lynx effectively makes them collateral damage from indiscriminate UCP mythological carpet-bombing. If “wildlife management” is as oxymoronic as I remember it from my forestry days, nobody has a good enough estimate of these wildlife species populations to formulate anything but by way of the most precautionary principles. —But WHOA! There’s “science” in there, and “experts” and “government” and “environment” which effectively doubles-down on UCP narratological warfare by adding biological warfare to the mythos. Because every good MAGAnaut knows Alberta was created six millennia ago, just as it is—or should be today: effortlessly rat free, a priori.
I’m not sure that I agree with you, Scotty, that the Mormons who slipped across the border into British North America came in hopes of to continuing practicing plural marriage so much as they came to escape prosecution for practicing it south of the Medicine Line. John A. Macdonald himself denied their wish to practice polygamy in the North West Territory and still they came. Even Charles Ora Card brought only one of his wives with him. DJC
Thank you for that perspective, David.
I guess using west coast trawlers on Claire lake comes next!
An introduction to squirrel hunting in grade four .
Damn, the possibilities are endless.
Shame you cannot smoke at the legislature building tho!
TB
Possibly our Minister of Huntin’ and Fishin’ is harking back to the classic study of lynx and snowshoe hare population cycles in northern Canada, which used as its data nearly a century’s worth of Hudson’s Bay Company fur trade records and thus involved population size estimates from animals killed by trappers.
Ha ha ha just kidding. As if Loewen would have any truck with that egghead stuff.
I wonder how long it will be, given the recent electoral events in our southern neighbour, before Loewen is expediting hunting trips to the Alberta backwoods for Uday and Qusay Trump. Surely Todd can find a few problem grizzlies for those enthusiastic big-game hunters to legally euthanize. They’d be doing us a public service, and think of how Loewen would be improving the UCP’s profile with the Trump administration.
Uday and Qusay Trump. Well done, Lars! DJC
The difference between Uday and Qusay Trump and the sons of Saddam Hussein is another example of US forces rubbing out individuals half a world away posing no threat whatsoever to American domestic security.
Another installment of UCP bullshit science. Deadly.
The UCP can now be characterized in the same way as was the Republican Party by Heidi L Feldman,
“a combination of a cult and criminal syndicate, and thus not a legitimate participant … in democracy”.
The electorate are determined to give them majorities that range from the overwhelming to the merely commanding. I see no reason why will ever change. The same mechanisms leading to the Democratic Partie’s recent defeat are acting here: an smothering smog of disinformation with a captive and enthusiastic audience that is unreachable by conventional means.
I recall, back in my wayward days in the RPC, the mantra of many of its more youthful members was that God (Whatever the f*ck that is?) created the Earth for Man (Yep, just him.) to use up and discard. That is called “Dominion” over all of nature. This was the popular belief promoted by many a Republican, because it makes it easier to deregulate everything. This is not a practise based on sound management the environment; it’s based on the same madness found in those ‘End Times’ beliefs. Party now, because in the long run, we’re all dead.
As long as we have these idiot seniors believing every lie these Reformers feed them we can’t stop it. As long as the Reformers hide behind the word Conservative that’s good enough for these seniors, that’s how stupid they are. I learned years ago from senior friends who worked at the polling stations that the vast majority of people who vote in Alberta are easy to fool seniors and they are the ones keeping these Reformers in power and the recent votes in Red Deer proved it. Stupid seniors who show no respect for our children’s future, and those of us who do care can’t stop them, they out number us two to one.
“Asked why he decided to let trappers kill as many wolverines, lynx, otters and other fur-bearers as they want, Todd Loewen said it was to get a better idea of how many there are.”
But of course, it is simply the demonstrated subtlety, nuance, and inscrutability of intellect that demarcates and separates the ‘very stable genius’, thus setting him apart and far above the entire range of scientific specialists and their life work.
Think of the possibilities that arise from applying the Loewen ‘line of reasoning’ (“A line of reasoning refers to a logical path of thought or a sequence of ideas or arguments that someone follows in order to reach a conclusion or make a decision. It is a structured approach to derive at a result, linking various premises, facts or evidence to support or refute any claim or hypothesis.).
For example, a genocide (mass extinction event) like the one in Gaza or Rwanda is not a genocide, it is merely an applied means used to determine the size of a selected specific population. Absolutely brilliant. “How extremely stupid (of me) not to have thought of that.”
Or it is simply more of the the same old same old: crass commercialization, commodification, and monetization from a calculating opportunist seeking pecuniary enrichment.
Now I know its a wolverine. It is very cute. There is no need for humans to go out and trap or kill animals in the north, unless you live there and require them for food or clothing. To kill these animals to ship their fur to manufacturers to produce products for an upscale market, is simply short sighted and crazy.
There are those who say they need to trap to make money. No they don’t. Get another job.
Animals are going extinct fast enough. We don’t need to speed it up.
Poor animals – unfortunately we will not stop until they are all gone.
It is outrageous that we still have hunting in Alberta.
As the grandson of a half Cherokee Indian who lived to hunt, fish and trap I know he would have been furious with this sort of stupidity. He ran a trap line east of Penticton B.C. that covered a 100 miles and trapped Lynx when he was certain the population allowed him to do so. He also worked for the City of Penticton for many years and Spiller Road is named after him.Prior to that he ran a trading post at East Way northeast of Vulcan and traded with the Blackfoot Indians from Siksik.
So we all know what Mr. Loewen and the PC’s are doing in regards to wildlife management in Alberta is an absolute joke. It will lead to a catastrophic decline of many species on his “Hit List”. It will only benefit him, his guiding, outfitting and trapping buddies …for a while until all animals are shot and gone. If our “letter writing” and verbal opposition to these measures are not getting anywhere, what legal means are out there to stop this BS??