A black bear captures a salmon in the wilds of the British Columbia central coast. This is nature at its most raw, but continued encroachment by humans in these areas raises the question: will scenes like this continue to play out on our coasts?

Can we co-exist?

Already beleaguered in their natural environment, our nature’s predators have a new problem: our expanding outdoor playground is encroaching on their homes. Coast&Kayak Magazine looks at the long-term ramifications of how human recreation is the next big hurdle for our coast’s wild mammals.

Everything in nature is about cause and effect. Change one thing, something else changes. We don’t always see it, but when we do, it’s amazing how this new information can change our understanding of how the world works.

Consider the complex relationship of sub-tidal, intertidal and terrestrial species. That complexity kept a key relationship invisible until 1978, when biologist James Estes published Sea Otter Predation and Community Organization in the Western Aleutian Islands, and linked the very simple formula between sea otters, urchins and kelp beds. Take sea otters out of the picture, James Estes discovered, and kelp beds, the forests of our oceans, will disappear.

It’s a textbook cause-and-effect relationship for both its simplicity and convenience. For one, it’s a concept even a grade schooler can appreciate. Without sea otters, no predators eat urchins therefore urchins eat the kelp till the kelp disappears. For another, sea otters are cute and of no particular threat to humans, so repatriating sea otters to our Pacific coast to revitalize kelp forests was an easy task ecologically, politically and socially: a rare example when all three considerations mesh.

For other predators, the relationships aren’t nearly as simple. We might be able to understand the role, for instance, that bears play through salmon in fertilizing forests, or that wolves play in leaving carrion to ensure the survival of a rich tapestry of species. The biological and environmental understanding is certainly there. But the jury is still out on whether we have the political will and – more importantly – the social will to ensure predators will get to keep their essential roles in our wild places.

Unfortunately, there’s one cause and effect for which the outcome still remains unknown: what role outdoor enthusiasts – kayakers, hikers and campers – are having on the already thin resources that carnivores require for survival. But considering the number of dead animals already in our wake, the prognosis isn’t particularly good.

May 2008: It’s the start of the busy season on the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail on the southwest coast of Vancouver Island. Politically, a feud is underway as outdoor activists of all stripes are fighting a developer whose eventual goal is to build several hundred cottages on the doorstep of this as-of-now wilderness trail, meaning a portion of the hike would meander along backyards instead of secluded forest.

Further along the trail, at Sombrio Beach, the regular weekend crowd of campers and surfers is congregating. It’s a young party atmosphere, with many surfers to be seen bobbing in the waves awaiting the chance to catch a ride. Most won’t, as the waves aren’t particularly great for surfing today, but no one is complaining too loudly. Empty liquor bottles along the waterfront are an indication surf isn’t the only reason to be here.

Already there’s some drama. A bear has been causing problems, apparently because it has discovered that backpacks mean food. Conservation officers with shotguns have been patrolling the area on the lookout for it, a reminder that bears that equate humans with food are usually dead bears – another of nature’s many cause-and-effect relationships, with this one all too often ending with a shotgun.

Not wishing to be part of the party atmosphere at Sombrio we pick a secluded beach difficult to access from land and well away from the main group of campers. Not long after arriving we sight a bear along the top end of the beach. It appears to be a juvenile male. Sure enough, it takes a trajectory straight towards our backpacks set up against the rocks behind us on the beach. It seems unconcerned with our presence, so I set off a bear banger (a device that shoots a charge towards a bear that explodes like a shotgun). The noise is deafening, but it only succeeds in stopping the bear in its tracks. Not prepared to give it time to consider its options I aim carefully with a second charge, and this time the bear has had enough. It turns and runs back into cover.

Not long after, we hear rustling in the scrub in the forest above the backpacks. Sure enough, the bear pops its head out from the thick vegetation – probably to get his bearings, so to speak. It appears he’s picking another more direct route towards our backpacks that involves a supremely steep and overgrown area of shoreline. I fire off another bear banger (the third shortly after arriving here; we have six in our pack to last our trip), and the aim is almost perfect, within inches of the bear. We don’t see it again, but we can follow its movement through shaking bushes as it retreats back towards the deeper forest.

Our best hope is the young male will learn from the bear bangers that humans are dangerous and best avoided. But the jury is out on whether his new-found fear will outweigh his desire for easy food.

His odds aren’t great. The deciding factor is the conservation officer’s discretion, based on his assessment of the bear’s risk to public safety. In making this judgment in 2010, conservation officers shot and killed 657 bears. The five-year average is 614 per year.

In other words, in almost any given confrontation with humans, the bear will die.

Fear in wild animals is an interesting phenomenon. If predators are truly scared, they will do their best to stay away from humans. But doing so means reducing the size of their range, which ultimately leads to a decline in population. Grizzly bears are a perfect example of a species that cannot co-exist with humans, reflected in the fact that wild grizzlies have been driven out from most of the U.S. Wolves haven’t fared much better, in large part due to a federal program of eradication earlier last century. The few surviving predators tend to lead lives of quiet seclusion, with cougars being the perfect example of an aloof species – rarely seen despite living on the doorstep of human civilization. In truth, it’s the key to their survival.

A loss of fear among some mammals can seem superficially beneficial to the species. For instance, deer can now comfortably eat, sleep and live in residential neighbourhoods where their natural predators cannot. The result is inevitably a troubling population balloon, and as a consequence everyone from harried gardeners to roadside carcass removers will begin to see culls as a necessary evil to keep the population in check.

We know, of course, that wolves are part of the cycle that would otherwise keep deer populations in control. But the biological solution is unlikely to outweigh the social barrier: wolves roaming playgrounds simply won’t do. So repatriation of a wolf population bordering urban areas is unlikely to ever gain serious social appeal. It’s unfortunate, though, as the biological imperative goes beyond simply controlling the deer population. As an example, biologist Douglas Smith found after 70 years of absence in Yellowstone National Park, the spinoffs from a return of wolves was fantastic in unexpected ways. As the wolves returned so did the other scavenging species that relied on the carcasses left behind in the wolves’ wake. And so an entire ecosystem, right down to cottonwood and aspen, was revitalized simply because one species returned.

When humans enter the picture, though, the balance changes, even in wilderness parkland. Consider the chain of events that led to the now-famous attack of a kayaker on the beach of Vargas Island in Vancouver Island’s Clayoquot Sound. In 2000, a group of 18 kayakers stopped to camp at Ahous Bay. Two slept outside. One woke to be dragged by a wolf along the beach in his sleeping bag, and then was viciously mauled. The kayaker received stitches; the two wolves involved were shot and killed.

An examination after the attack found the wolves were habituated to humans, possibly to the extent of being hand-fed as pups. Nor was the problem isolated, as aggressive behavior by other wolves, including raiding campsites, was widely documented on Vargas after the attack.

And as we know, habituated wild animals are dead wild animals.

May 1963: Biologist Robert T. Paine conducts an experiment on a perfectly balanced ecosystem on a rock in Makah Bay on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. Barnacles, shells, muscles and starfish have a seemingly perfect balance on this collection of rocks.

On one of these rocks Paine decided to remove the starfish, the king of the rock in terms of being top predator. Superficially it would seem life would just be simpler for the remaining species, but it wasn’t so. The balance of the tiny ecosystem shifted once the key predator was ousted and of the 15 original species on the rock, at the end of the test only one remained: mussels.

This experiment gave rise to the prominence of one of the greatest cause-and-effect relationships of nature: the existence of a “keystone species,” a predator that provides balance for the other species. The lesson is simple: remove a keystone predator and the careful balance of nature will collapse. But the larger questions remain unanswered: how many keystone species are there? And which are the ones we are in danger of losing? Or have already lost?

The most grave scenario, of course, is that every top predator is a keystone species, and as we grind down their numbers we pave the way for a catastrophic biological upheaval.

The attack by a wolf on the beach on Vargas Island prompted one significant benefit: the launch of a study by the Clayoquot Sound Biosphere Trust Fund to study interactions between humans and large carnivores in three study areas – the West Coast Trail, the Broken Group Islands and Long Beach, all within the Pacific Rim National Park.

One related study found the odds of seeing a cougar aren’t great: just 0.005 sightings per hiker in 2002, but better off-season, peaking at 0.03 sightings per hiker that same year. But as with bears, the prognosis is grim for a cougar once it is sighted. In 2010, conservation officers in British Columbia killed 47 cougars. That was a good year. The five-year average is 76 cougars a year – a remarkable number for such an elusive species where the odds of even seeing one in the summer on the coast’s prime wilderness trail is just a half a percent.

Other factors to consider include what’s happening in the surrounding habitat: urban encroachment, logging and any number of other industrial uses could all be factors reflecting in higher numbers of carnivores entering recreational areas. By cordoning off wildlife into smaller parcels, it makes the impact of recreational use in the remaining wilderness havens all the more significant. One telling 1999 study in BC found that a spike in bear attacks against small groups of one to two people was more closely linked to an increase in previously unvisited backcountry areas than to food and garbage issues.

And if more wilderness visitors means more adverse wildlife encounters, it’s a bad trend. We are, after all, seeking out new wilderness areas in initiatives such as the BC Marine Trail (the focus of the Spring and Summer 2011 issues of Coast&Kayak). And by encroaching we run the risk of essentially loving nature to death.

Also discouraging is that one single solution seems to exist to deal with aggressive wildlife: a shotgun. Little credence is given to relocation, as territory is usually already claimed, and habituation to humans is a habit rarely undone just by moving the animal.

July 2011: Kayakers spy a bear ambling along the Gorge Waterway in Victoria, BC. The bear is doing nothing aggressive. It is simply heading in the wrong direction – towards the city centre. Eventually it hides in a ravine. Dogs are used to try to tree it; rocks are thrown by humans to try to oust it. But the bear holds its ground. Lacking other options, it is shot and killed by a conservation officer. Four bullets are used. Relocation wasn’t considered viable; there was nowhere to place it not already filled with territorial bears, conservation officers said.

2003: A group of more than 20 hikers on the West Coast Trail watch a cougar enter their campsite. A report indicates the amount of time the cougar spent in the camp was “extended,” before one hiker decided to take action and scare the cougar away. In doing so he incurred the anger of his fellow hikers who apparently wanted to continue to view the cougar. The national park had distributed information on problems with cougar stalking and habituation to deter this type of encounter, but the group of hikers either hadn’t read it or felt the information didn’t apply.

The incident almost went unreported because the hiker who did report it felt the animal would be destroyed if she informed park staff. This particular one wasn’t. It was lucky.

July 2003: Pacific Rim National Park staff close the popular Gibraltar Island campsite in the Broken Group Islands because a female wolf has moved onto the island and is acting aggressively, likely to protect two cubs. Two wolves at the Clarke Island campsite cause a second closure (the other campsites remained open). Wolf tracks on the various Broken Group Islands are an indication of the wolves’ wide hunting range and the incredible ability to swim from one end of the island group to the other and back in search of food. But reports of wolves being fed and moving through campsites in an unwary manner trickle in until the incidents culminate in May, 2004, when a park warden has to kill a wolf due to “a series of aggressive actions and habituation behaviour.”

In other words, closing the campsites, while drastic from one perspective, wasn’t enough to help keep all the wolves alive. And if an aggressive policy of segregation doesn’t work, then what is the answer?

One obvious solution is better backwoods etiquette: cache your food and don’t feed the animals, even if they’re cute and curious. And more than that, scare them away so they appreciate that humans are to be feared, not stalked or befriended. And don’t leave food unattended, as animals can easily become backpack marauders thanks to one careless hiker.

Another necessary ingredient is a complete social change in attitude: less hysteria and more common sense. A cougar or bear sighting does not equate an imminent bear or cougar attack. There is a risk, but in almost every circumstance it can be managed without killing an animal.

If there is good news, it lies in initiatives like the Clayoquot Biosphere Trust Fund’s WildCoast Project. With better reporting and monitoring of encounters we can better understand the issues – a critical first step in finding a solution that doesn’t involve a shotgun.

Information for this article was compiled from various sources. For more on the WildCoast project, visit clayoquotbiosphere.org. For information on the cause and effect of relationships in nature affecting predators, read Where The Wild Things Were by William Stolzenburg. Most other studies mentioned in this article can easily be found online.