The EWC’s Trapping & Snaring Campaign is working toward a complete ban on the use of snares for commercial trapping, as well as modern, ethical, science-based updates to all trapping regulations for fur-bearing mammals, particularly large apex predators like wolves, lynx and wolverines.
This campaign is currently in the research and development stages for an exciting, new investigative documentary series, Trapped in the Past: Does Canada’s Trapping Industry Need Change? This series will follow in the footsteps of our highly successful initial videos, ‘Killing Canada’s Wolves with Neck Snares’ and ‘Neck Snares, Pets and Taxpayer Dollars’. We urge you to get involved, learn more, and help us raise funds to complete this ambitious project using a combination of fieldwork, research and interviews with experts and stakeholders, to advocate and educate on behalf of our wolves and other fur-bearing animals to ensure that trapping regulations are updated to better reflect the current values of society.
After research in the early 2000s showed a struggling grizzly bear population in Alberta, the trophy hunt was banned and the grizzly bear was listed as a Threatened species. Recent data released in March 2021 indicates that Alberta grizzlies are starting to rebound and the Environment Minister has gone on record suggesting that the province might bring back the hunt. This campaign, in conjunction with the Grizzly Bear Foundation, takes aim at this issue with the recently-released documentary, In the Crosshairs: The Road to Recovery for Alberta’s Threatened Grizzly Bears.
Alberta banned grizzly bear hunting in 2006 and in 2010, grizzlies were classified as Threatened in the province. But now new research is expected to show an increase in some Alberta grizzly bear populations and many suspect the UCP government will use this new data to reintroduce the trophy hunt. Please help Alberta’s grizzlies now with a donation to support this important project for the production and promotion of a 10-12 minute documentary to raise public awareness.
Watch tHe Doc & Visit The Project PageIn July 2015, the death of Zimbabwe’s 13-year-old Cecil the lion at the hands of an American big-game hunter caused an international media firestorm. Conservationists, politicians and celebrities alike were outraged for Cecil, and within five months the United States took steps to make it much more difficult for U.S. citizens to legally kill African lions.
Most Canadians were equally outraged at Cecil’s death, so why are we not equally concerned at how our own “lions” are hunted in our backyard? Our Canada’s Big Cats campaign intends to rectify that, helping to expose the lack of science and ethics in the management of Canada’s cougars, lynx and bobcats.
This campaign will seek to effect change at the government level in how our cats are managed, hunted and trapped.
The EWC’s Protecting Canada’s Wolf project is working toward a complete revamping of how Canadian wolves are managed, hunted, trapped, regulated and most importantly, valued. Working together with Wolf Awareness, Raincoast Conservation aand a number of other organizations, this campaign crosses over with several of our other campaigns, including Trapping and Snaring and Buffer Zones, to seek a modern, ethical, science-based update to all trapping and hunting regulations for wolves in Canada.
This campaign will touch on an array of issues affecting wolf conservation in Canada, including unlimited trapping quotas, trophy hunting with extended seasons (including during denning), wolf culls, and wolf poisoning. But it will also focus on educating about the true nature of wolves and their similarities to humans and our family dogs, as well as their intrinsic and economic value alive and functioning as an apex predator in our ecosystems. Our videos and outreach focus on education and science, asking for immediate government action to devise better wolf management plans.
With large carnivores in decline across the globe, Canada provides one of the greatest opportunities worldwide to ensure that large carnivores continue to thrive as part of a functioning predator-prey ecosystem. The only places in Canada that our large carnivores are currently protected from hunting and trapping are in our national parks, yet studies repeatedly show that even the largest North American parks are inadequate in size to fully protect wolves and other wide-ranging carnivores.
The EWC’s Buffer Zones campaign is working toward a solution to that problem: Buffer Zones around our Canadian Rocky Mountain national parks that large carnivores are fully protected in. These Buffer Zones would still allow hunting, recreational activities and approved industrial development, yet would eliminate all large carnivore hunting and trapping, enabling a fully functioning predator-prey ecosystem.
Our focus will be on inspiring public engagement in support of development of these Buffer Zones through a well-strategized campaign with our partners, Wolf Awareness and the Jasper Environmental Association, using images, videos and social media to reach, inform, and engage with the appropriate decision-makers.
Together with our work on wolves, our Caribou project aims to help protect critical caribou habitat in BC and Alberta and educate about the real causes of the endangered mountain caribou’s decline in much of their southern range. Caribou have become a political public relations tool in both provinces, where blaming wolves has been the modus operandi of governments to date, rather than investigating and reforming the real culprits: logging, oil and gas, and recreational access.
There is a lot of media coverage on caribou conservation, but so far it hasn’t led to tangible actions from our governments. Our focus will be on continuing to put pressure on provincial and federal governments to immediately enact meaningful caribou recovery plans.
