As with so many other animals, the black bear has been consistently maligned. Yet reports of wanton attacks on human beings are statistically very rare. As for the threat they pose to farming, confirmed losses inflicted on farmers by bears in the Peace River district of Alberta, which has one of the few remaining significant bear populations in contact with agriculture, annually average something like a tenth of a cent on the dollar. This loss is mostly accounted for in beehives destroyed by a few bears unable to control their lust for honey. The vast majority of reports of bears of any species killing livestock reveal themselves, on investigation, to be reports of bears scavenging animals already dead.
In Cape Breton the once abundant black bears were systematically reduced to a mere handful restricted to the confines of a national park, because they were regarded as inveterate sheep-killers. The bears were destroyed, yet sheep losses continued and have now reached such proportions that sheep farming has generally become uneconomical in Cape Breton. The culprits, it now appears, are, and probably always were, uncontrolled domestic dogs.
In fine, it is not now possible, nor has it ever been, to establish a valid case against the black bear as a species seriously inimical to human enterprise. Despite this, the persecution has never slackened. In Quebec, in 1956, government bounty of $10 a head was paid on 4,424 black bears. In addition, prizes to a value of $9,000 were presented to the bounty hunters with the biggest scores. Most of these bears were killed in remote areas of the Gaspé and southern Ungava where there was no possibility of their having been in conflict with human interests. The prizes served, however, to attract a goodly number of foreign sportsmen, mainly from the United States.
According to the generous estimates of government wildlife officials, the black bear population of the entire eastern Canadian maritime region, including much of eastern Quebec and all of Ungava, does not now number more than 10,000. The species is totally extinct on Prince Edward Island and virtually so in most other settled regions.
What of the black bear’s future? I quote from a recent Canadian government pamphlet: “Management should be directed toward the maintenance of populations in remote areas for hunting, and limiting the numbers in more settled areas where problems of predation arise. Once considered an undesirable predator and a nuisance, black bears are rapidly gaining popularity as a prized game animal... A spring hunt is especially appealing to the many sportsmen who prefer large game, since it provides them with the opportunity to hunt big game at a time when other animals are protected... Undoubtedly the status of black bears as game animals will be enhanced in future as human populations expand and the demand for game species increases.”
A small but illuminating example of how the policy works was reported by a Toronto newspaper in August, 1981: “In central and northern Ontario more than 36 black bears had to be killed by conservation officers because [the lateness of the wild] berry crops had forced the bears out of the woods and closer to populated areas.” The image of these “conservation” officers diligently practising current wildlife management is one that tends to stick in the mind, if not the throat.
“More settled areas” evidently include national parks. Between 1950 and 1979, park wardens in Canada’s Jasper and Banff parks killed 523 black bears and deported 547. The black bear population in these two enormous parks is now “thought to be” only about 300. Current policy dictates that people are to have precedence in these “nature preserves” and too many bears, whether blacks or grizzlies, apparently have an inhibiting effect upon the “recreational activities of park guests.” Clearly man’s inhibiting effect on wildlife is not the point at issue.
With a current Canadian “potential sportsmen’s harvest” of about 30,000 black bears a year, as recommended by Canadian provincial and federal experts, it is to be expected that the gunners will be able to shed enough blood to satisfy them... for the nonce. But when the last black bears have gone the route of their white and brown cousins, what will the sportsmen turn to then, poor things?
8. The Musk Bearers
The decline of the fur-bearing animals of northeastern America embraces almost every species of any monetary worth but is best epitomized by what happened to the musk bearers (so called because most of them have musk-producing scent glands), including marten, fisher, ermine (weasel), otter, wolverine, and mink. Most of these were especially valued for their dense, short-haired fur, which was of a quality greatly esteemed for dress and decoration by wealthy Europeans. In consequence, they provided the sustaining basis for the early trade in peltry from the New World.
Initially the most sought-after member of the family was the marten. About the size of a small cat, it was clothed in a soft, rich fur that usually ranged from buff to reddish-brown but could be almost black. All marten pelts were of great worth, but the rather rare black colour phase, known as sable, was so costly that its use was mainly restricted to royalty.
Martens were found everywhere coniferous forests grew, from the edge of the tundra south through most of the New England states. For a predator, the species was extraordinarily abundant, which, of course, it could only have been so long as its prey—chiefly squirrels, rabbits, and other small mammals—were equally abundant. In mid-seventeenth century, Josselyn reported the marten as being “innumerable” in New England and, as late as 1749, two Canadiens and two Indians caught 400 on Labrador’s Northwest River in a single winter. Even as late as 1902, a single trapper working a previously unhunted part of Anticosti Island killed 300 in a year.
By the mid-1700s, the French in Canada were annually exporting 30,000–40,000 martens, mostly trapped by Indians in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. At the same time, large quantities were also being exported from Newfoundland and the New England colonies. In 1768, Captain Cartwright wrote of the marten in Newfoundland: “A creature with which the whole country abounds, and is of all others most easily entrapped by the furrier... it follows every track made by man, is allured by the smell of provisions, haunts buildings [and so is] easily turned to its own destruction.”
As the nineteenth century began, what must originally have seemed an inexhaustible supply of martens began to fail as human predation mounted. Toward the end of the 1800s, they had become rarities throughout the eastern part of North America—even in the interior of Labrador. John Rowan gives us a sorry glimpse of what was happening to the last of the agile little animals in the 1870s. “Martens have of late years been destroyed by trappers by means of poison laid in little pellets of grease [which] preserve the poison from the weather. Sometimes a crow flies off with one of these... and drops dead. A fox in turn picks up the crow, so that many more animals are destroyed than are found by the poisoner.” In the same period, Tocque, in Newfoundland, wrote: “[although] formerly great numbers were taken by the [Micmac] Indians, they are now but seldom met with.”
By the early decades of the twentieth century, the marten was believed to be extinct on Anticosti and was definitely so on Prince Edward Island. By the 1950s, it had disappeared from Cape Breton, had almost vanished from the rest of Nova Scotia, was verging on extinction in Newfoundland, where the distinct local race had been internationally listed as an endangered species, was gone from most of New England, and was rare in eastern Quebec and Labrador.
Since then, some action has been taken to prevent its complete extinction. Martens are now officially protected in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia where relict populations of a few score, or possibly hundreds, may still survive. The species has been re-introduced into some other regions, including New Brunswick, where it had been extirpated. However, if only because of its loss of habitat, it is unlikely that it will ever recover more than a fraction of its original numbers.
The lithe and graceful otter is one of the most attractive of our native mammals. It is now rare although at first contact it was so abundant, and so tame, that it was used as a staple food by summer cod fishers and early settlers. Science does not o
fficially recognize the fact, but there seem to be two distinct races in the eastern seaboard region. The smaller of the two, generally brown in colour, inhabits fresh water and is seldom more than four feet long. The other, which may grow to as much as five feet in length, is sometimes so dark as to appear black and lives in and by salt water. Countrymen from Newfoundland and Labrador make a clear distinction between the two kinds, which they claim not only look unlike but have a different quality of fur and behave in different ways.
At least one large salt-water otter has lived for several years on and near my peninsular property in Cape Breton. I see it rarely but, in winter, it makes use of my snowshoe trails through the woods—perhaps hunting rabbits—and its tracks are nearly twice the size of a “normal” otter. One summer day in 1977, it emerged from the forest onto an open beach a hundred yards in front of me as I was walking my three dogs. They spurted after the animal, which paused, drew itself up on its hind legs, and awaited their approach. Nonplussed, the dogs skidded to a halt a few feet distant, and only then did the otter, which seemed nearly as big as a dog itself, nonchalantly lower itself to the beach, amble into the sea, and swim leisurely away. This individual, or one like it, dives for mussels and bay scallops in several fathoms of water well offshore, then cracks and eats them under an isolated spruce at the tip of a windswept gravel bar where it and, doubtless, its ancestors have amassed a veritable kitchen midden of empty shells. This is behaviour of a kind I have never seen mirrored by a freshwater otter.
It seems to have been the “maritime” form that suffered first at the hands of invading Europeans. Anthony Parkhurst, circa 1578, tells us that “Of Otters we [the fishermen] may take like store [with the bears, which were so numerous] everywhere, so you may kill them as oft as you list.” Denys, in the early part of the next century, wrote, “The taste is very much the same [as the French otter] but they differ from those in France in this, that they are... longer and blacker.” Almost without exception, early commentators refer to the animal in terms such as “very common,” “plentiful,” or “abundant,” and it is usually clear from the context that they are referring to the marine form. Cartwright, in 1768, wrote that the islands in northern Newfoundland were occupied by otters and, at the turn of that century, furriers in Exploits Bay depended heavily on trapping otters from salt water.
The freshwater form early came to the attention of the French as they worked their way into the interior via the St. Lawrence system. It must have been at least as abundant as its marine counterpart. Lahontan, around 1680, described a month spent with a band of Indians in the Saguenay country, during which “the Savages took about two hundred and fifty Canada Otters; the best of which... are sold in France for four or five [crowns].”
Fur returns for the nineteenth century show that a great number of river otters were still being killed, but the supply of marine otters had dwindled to the point where the few pelts that appeared at European fur sales were simply regarded as being especially large and dark Canada otters. By the time the twentieth century opened, both kinds had become scarce.
There seems little likelihood of any marked improvement in their status. Not only do they still have to contend with deliberate destruction for the fur business, but they have lost and continue to lose more and more of their original habitat. There are now few places left where they can find security. As one Canadian mammalogist noted in 1975, “Many otters are killed each year in lakes and coastal areas by hunters cruising in boats or waiting for the moose or game bird on shore. This senseless plinking at Otters combined with heavy trapping of the species could cause great depletion, even extermination in some regions.”
This is an understatement. By 1975, the otter was extinct in Prince Edward Island and so rare in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick that the annual “harvest” from these two provinces had shrunk from several thousands at the beginning of the century to a mere 560. In 1976, the total kill of otters from the whole of Canada was only 16,000 and the federal Wildlife Service considered that the species was being “harvested to its full potential”—whatever that may be.
Anyone who sees an otter in the wild these days can count him or herself lucky. As for our descendants, they may never know the otter at all, except in company with so many other once but no longer abundant animals—as dull denizens of zoos.
The fox-size fisher (so-called) is a scaled-up version of the marten. It is as swift and agile as its cousin and just as much at home in the upper branches of the forest. More elusive than its smaller relative, the fisher seldom permits itself to be seen by man. Nevertheless, it is very curious and, therefore, as easy to trap as the marten. It depends heavily on porcupines and varying hares for its food but, strange to say, does not fish for a living; in fact, it displays a cat-like aversion for water.
The name “fisher” is obviously a misnomer, a fact that has long mystified naturalists. I think the explanation is one of transposed identity. As we shall see, two similar-looking species of musk bearers originally inhabited the north-eastern seaboard. One was indeed a fisherman and came to the attention of Europeans early on. The other was a denizen of dense forests, whose existence was not widely known until the age of settlement was well advanced. When the first animal, the true fisher, was driven into extinction, I believe its name was insensibly transferred to the look-alike animal that bears it today. The original name by which the woodland animal we now call fisher was known to Indians and early French and English traders was pékan or pekan.
Always elusive in life, the pekan is a vague presence in the historic annals except as a statistic in fur returns which, incidentally, show that the pelt of the female commanded a premium price, thus exerting extra pressure on the species in its struggle to survive intensive hunting. The fur returns also show that it was trapped relentlessly, and in such numbers that, by the end of the nineteenth century, it had been effectively destroyed throughout most of its northeastern range.
Its natural history is so scantily recorded that there is no clear-cut evidence that it inhabited Newfoundland before the arrival of Europeans. If it did, it is now totally extinct there. It had also become extinct on Anticosti and Prince Edward Island before 1900 and was exterminated in Nova Scotia before the 1930s. It is now all but extinct in the northeastern United States and so rare in Gaspé and in New Brunswick that, as long ago as 1935, some biologists were expressing the fear that it might already have been extirpated throughout the whole northeastern portion of its former range.
Such might well have been the pekan’s fate had it not been for an astonishing reversal in our perception of its value. The years immediately after World War II saw an explosive growth in the pulp and paper industry throughout the northeastern seaboard region, with a consequent massive over-harvesting of the forests. By the late 1950s, it had already become apparent that trees were being consumed faster than natural growth could replace them. But since a reduction or even stabilization of paper and pulp production was unthinkable (to the contrary, it had to be increased), more raw materials had to be made available through other expedients.
It was therefore decided that there must be less waste and “greater utilization.” The way chosen to achieve these ideal industrial objectives was to attempt to destroy other living things which might be taking toll, no matter how natural a one, of the chosen trees. So began the crusade against “forest pests.”
Pests are those life forms that are seen to compete with us in our quest for profits through the exploitation of natural resources. Consequently, insects such as the spruce budworm, which have existed as part of a balanced forest community since time immemorial, are pests. So are hardwoods such as maple and birch trees that have the temerity to grow amongst stands of spruce and pine we covet for the pulp machines. They all must go.
The war to exterminate the perceived competitors of the pulp industry in Atlantic Canada and the New England states has now been raging for more than thirty years. The p
rincipal weapons used have been, and remain, noxious aerial sprays. Thousands of tons of such poisons as DDT and organo-phosphate insecticides have drenched forests, fields, rivers, and lakes; and their baleful effects have recently been reinforced by the spraying of hardwood defoliants containing ingredients used in the infamous Agent Orange that devastated plant, animal, and human life alike in Vietnam.
As to the results achieved by this ongoing chemical warfare, it is worthy of note that in New Brunswick, for example, the spruce budworm remains persistently alive and vigorous despite having been under intensive aerial attack through three decades; the general devastation wrought by the rain of poison on vertebrate life has been incalculable.
Insects and hardwoods are not the only life forms accused of reducing the amount of pulp available to the mills. Porcupines and varying hares are also considered pests since both eat tree bark, especially in winter when other food is hard to get. However, they in turn are eaten by the pekan, and the discovery of this fact led the pulp and paper industry to require of the governments of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Quebec that the pekan, or fisher, be protected in all stands of “marketable” timber, and be re-introduced where it had already been exterminated.
The behest was obeyed with the happy result that the pekan reappeared on Anticosti Island and in parts of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Unfortunately, the big martens did not justify their existence by waging the hoped-for war of extermination against porcupines and hares and, in consequence, the pulp and paper industry lost interest in them. The interests of others, though, had been aroused by the modest comeback of the fisher, and provincial Fish and Game authorities responded by opening a trapping season on the animals. Thus, in 1976, sixty-four pekans were legally trapped in Nova Scotia and 172 in New Brunswick. This is thought to have represented as much as 80 per cent of the number born that year.