In S5E8 of The Animal Turn, Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka discussed how the well-being of humans and animals are interconnected and how both humans and animals are harmed by human conflict. I want to further explore these dual themes by considering the closely related brown bear in Ukraine and grizzly bear in Canada!
(originally aired 1 December 2022).
Brown Bears and the Conflict in Ukraine
On March 4 of this year, seven brown bears were evacuated from a Ukrainian animal shelter near Kyiv as Russian attacks on the city intensified. Bear Sanctuary Domazhyr in Western Ukraine offered to temporarily house the bears, and while the bears were being transported to their temporary sanctuary, they encountered road checkpoints, tank convoys, and enemy shelling (Anthony, 2022). Eventually, they arrived at their destination, very stressed, but safe (Anthony, 2022). Bear Sanctuary Domazhyr’s most recent intake is a brown bear named Bakhmut who was abandoned in a war-torn region of Ukraine.[4] He was found stressed and malnourished inside his destroyed enclosure.
These circumstances are common for domesticated and captive animals during wartime. Often animals are abandoned by human caregivers or captors who are forced to flee violence. Many animals in homes, sanctuaries, zoos, or farms are trapped in their enclosures and unable to escape attacks, or are unable to procure their own food when humans no longer provide for them. Wild animals are also deeply impacted by war and conflict. According to the International Fund for Animal Welfare, between 1950 and 2000, 80% of the world’s major armed conflicts have occurred in biodiversity hotspots.
And a 2018 study that analyzed decades of wildlife population trends across the African continent concluded that “the single most important predictor” of wildlife populations is the frequency of human conflict (Daskin et al, 2018).
Wild animals are killed by nuclear tests, chemical warfare, and landmines. Often, important wildlife habitats are deliberately destroyed as a military strategy. And during conflict, environmental protections often crumble, and activities like resource extraction, poaching, or the illegal wildlife trade intensify.
These circumstances are obviously traumatic, but knowing a bit more about brown and grizzly bears offers additional depth to our understanding of how their lives are impacted by human conflict and war.
Brown and grizzly bears are commonly thought to be solitary, and while this is true, it’s also true that they experience rich social and emotional lives. These bears are very communicative, and even when they are alone, they are capable of interacting with other bears through scent marking. They sometimes congregate to hunt migrating animals or to eat bountiful blooms of berries. Female browns and grizzlies raise their cubs for three years, which is an incredible investment of care and energy.
In the Grizzly Times Podcast, the brown and grizzly bear expert Charlie Russell describes them as vibrant individuals and social beings. Russell raised and released orphaned brown bear cubs in Russia, and these cubs were curious, infectiously joyful, and resourceful. In addition to raising orphaned cubs, Russel served as a babysitter for cubs whose parents enlisted his help. He befriended a particular mother brown bear who would leave her cubs with Russel while she went off to forage and hunt, and who would come to collect her offspring when she was finished.
Brown and grizzly bears thrive when they can fully engage with their vast territories. Browns and grizzlies derive 60-90% of their diets from plants and they spend roughly 16 hours a day foraging, covering stretches of up to 40 kilometres. They have incredibly memories for where to forage for the most digestible foods and for when these food sources are at their most nutritious (Bieder, 2005). And even though the majority of brown and grizzly diets are plant-derived, they are also the world's second largest predators. They hunt a variety of animals, but perhaps their most well known prey is salmon. I imagine when grizzlies fish during salmon’s dramatic annual migration upstream, it must feel incredibly fulfilling for them to exercise their hunting skills in such a dynamic environment.
Browns and grizzlies have meaningful social worlds and emotional lives that can be disrupted by captivity and war. And both captivity and war deny bears access to their large territories that are so vital to their ways of life.
Canada's Grizzly Bears and Settler Colonialism
The well being of Indigenous people, grizzly bears, and their shared lands are fundamentally related. New research, which was done in collaboration between five First Nation groups, points to the enmeshment of Indigenous and grizzly lives. The research shows that the central coast of British Columbia, Canada, has three distinct genetic groups of grizzly bears and that these genetic differences align with three Indigenous language families. In a context of longstanding co-existence and convergence, these Indigenous communities have important relationships with grizzly bears as persons, kin, and spiritual figures. For example, the Wuikinuxv people understand that Grizzly Bears teach humans about how to live and what to eat in their shared lands. They also understand that bears have a special relationship with salmon, the forests, and the waters. Grizzly bears will catch salmon, and then carry the fish into the forest where their remains feed other species and fertilize the trees. In ecological terms, grizzly bears are a keystone species, who balance animal populations through predation, who disperse seeds and nutrients, and who till the soil.
Often, people think of Canada as a nation that is at peace. But that simply isn’t true. Ongoing settler colonialism is violence against Indigenous humans and animals.
The scholars Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang describe how in settler colonialism “[s]ettlers make Indigenous land their new home and source of capital, and [this] disruption of Indigenous relationships to land represents a profound epistemic, ontological, cosmological violence.” I want to emphasize that this profound violence is against both Indigenous humans and animals.
We can see this kind of settler colonial land theft occurring in the province of British Columbia. For example, for three decades, the Ktunaxa Nation fought the BC government, the Supreme Court, and land developers against the development of a ski resort in the sacred home of the Grizzly Bear Spirit. This region is critical grizzly bear habitat and it is where the Grizzly Bear Spirit was born, goes to heal, and returns to the spirit world (Ktunaxa Nation, 2022). The well-being and importance of the Grizzly Bear Spirit is inextricably interlinked with that of living grizzly bears, and the Ktunaxa people knew that if the sacred region was turned into a ski resort, both the Grizzly Bear Spirit and grizzly bears would be driven away. In 2019, the Ktunaxa were successful in ensuring that the sacred region was designated an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA). Though they were successful in protecting their grizzly relations, both grizzlies and Indigenous people continue to be harmed through colonial land theft, deforestation, trophy hunting, ranching, and development in Canada.
Brown bears and grizzlies are individuals who can suffer immensely from human conflict, but they are also exist in complex webs of relation that can be fundamentally threatened by human violence.
Amanda (Mandy) Bunten-Walberg was a PhD Candidate at Queen's University's School of Environmental Studies where her research explored more-than-human ethics in contagious contexts through the case study of bats and COVID-19. In particular, Mandy is interested in how more-than-human ethics, critical race theory, queer theory, and biopolitical theory might guide humans towards developing more ethical relationships with bats and other (human and more-than-human) persons who are dominantly understood as diseased. Learn more about our team here.
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