Living out in Kettley Canyon and having the remnants of a salmon-smoking operation on her property, Sue Greetham’s land has become a regular stop-off for grizzly bears making their way in and out of the mountains.

She ends up recognizing some of these bears year-after-year as they pass through, eventually becoming a bit fond of certain individuals.

This was the case with a big golden grizzly she called Charlie.

Charlie came by every season for three years in a row and Greetham, along with her neighbours, grew to like seeing and talking about Charlie.

Then Charlie disappeared.

“And I was concerned and thought, ‘oh my gosh, Isn’t that odd?’” Greetham said in an interview with the Star Thursday.

“And I’m starting to ask questions and talk to people – ‘have you seen him?’

“They said, ‘oh, he got shot right out in front of your place.’”

So, Greetham decided to take action.

First, she lobbied the nearby Carcross/Tagish First Nation to ban roadside hunting for grizzly bears in their territory.

After that success, she founded Grizzly Bear Protection Yukon to continue the effort.

It’s now four years later, and they’ve gathered almost 1,000 signatures on a petition to ban grizzly bear “trophy” hunting altogether and to ban grizzly bear hunting from roadsides everywhere in the Yukon.

They’ve also put the petition on change.org allowing for people all over the world to sign, and have gathered more than 37,000 signatures on this online version.

Her petition was presented to the Yukon legislature last week by NDP MLA Annie Blake, along with a motion calling for the bans.

Hunting for grizzly bears is legal in the Yukon, as is hunting from vehicles.

According to the management plans relied on by the Yukon government for policy decisions, the population of grizzlies in the territory is stable and can handle the harvest.

The population estimates used in these plans – from information that is over 30 years old – say there are about 6,000 to 7,000 grizzlies in the territory.

Greetham and her group counter that these numbers are too old, and should not be used as a measure.

Last year, 2,427 hunting tags were sold, though only 56 animals were killed by hunters.

Advocates for continued hunting say these numbers are sustainable and actually keep the population from growing too large.

Bryce Bekar, the president of the Yukon Fish & Game Association, weighed in, telling the Star he also disputes the characterization of grizzly bear hunting in the Yukon as “trophy hunting”.

Though he may keep part of the animal as a memento, the meat gets eaten.

“Some of the best meat I’ve ever eaten is grizzly bear meat,” Bekar said.

Looking at the number of hunting tags sold versus the number used, the ratio for grizzlies is unusual, and Bekar says it’s because people often buy the tags so they can defend an elk or other animal they are hunting after they have shot it, so it doesn’t get taken by a bear.

To be able to shoot a grizzly in a scenario like this and not risk getting in trouble from conservation officers, Bekar says hunters should have one of these tags.

He also reckons many older Yukoners who get free seniors’ hunting tags are taking up some of the permits just because they can.

Allowing for older hunters to still be able to harvest animals is a primary why his group advocates for hunters to continue to be allowed to shoot from roadsides, Bekar said.

“I’m 45 years old, I’m quite healthy, I can go out and do stuff, but we’ve got an aging population where some of our members are very old,” Bekar said.

“Roadside hunting offers them the opportunity to still harvest an animal.”

Bekar says his group has been dedicated to conservation for more than 70 years, and that the petition and resulting motion are not based on the facts.

But for others, grizzly bears are an iconic species that elicit an emotional response. And they have deep cultural value to Indigenous people in the Yukon.

The MLA who introduced the motion is from Old Crow and a citizen of the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation.

For Blake and her family, the animals have cultural and spiritual value.

“My grandfather told me when I was a kid to always respect the bear,” she told reporters at the legislature while explaining why she wanted to introduce the motion.

“You don’t eat it; it’s more of that spiritual connection and it’s like a guide for my life.”

This may not be the view of all Indigenous people in the Yukon, Blake acknowledged, but it is the view of her family.

Her outlook also stems from her own personal experiences with bears.

“I had a close encounter in Old Crow a couple years ago with a grizzly bear and two cubs, and I think I’ve learned not only to respect the animal for its being, but also respecting its significance or message that it’s giving me and my personal journey,” Blake said.

John Ryder, the Yukon’s fish and wildlife branch’s acting director, told the Star they have balanced Indigenous perspectives with those of hunters in the grizzly bear management plan they are using to make hunting harvest decisions.

“It’s important to note that we were well aware that the grizzly bears have great intrinsic and aesthetic and spiritual value to Yukoners,” Ryder said.

“And we also heard loud and clear in the 2019 management plan that there’s also an importance to Yukon residents for bear harvest.”

The management plan came about through a process that involved many partners with differing outlooks, explains Ryder, and was a “nonpartisan and objective” process.

This involved representatives of both government and First Nations, as well as hunting outfitters, local non-profits and other associations. They also did public engagement and surveys.

“So, it’s informed by broad engagement with a variety of groups,” Ryder said.

“And the plan really helps us ensure grizzly bear populations remain healthy and viable throughout the Yukon.”

The plan was eventually signed off by Pauline Frost, the former Liberal minister of Environment from Old Crow, who is currently chief of the Vuntut Gwitchin.

The outcome was that they determined hunting for grizzlies is currently a sustainable practice in the Yukon and the population of grizzly bears here is stable.

This is despite population estimates being from work conducted in the 1980s and ’90s – a main criticism of the management plan by Greetham’s group.

One of the central arguments Greetham and her group are making is that before hunting should be allowed, a new, more accurate count needs to be done.

She said other places such as B.C. and Alberta have been able to do this using a more modern, scientific approach.

“We’re not quite meeting that mark,” Greetham said.

But Ryder contends some more recent work by biologists does confim the old counts.

“We have been basing the numbers we have on more recent work and current estimates are that bear populations appear stable in the territory and we don’t have the information to suggest otherwise,” Ryder said.

Because the grizzly population is healthy in the Yukon but is in decline in much of the rest of Canada and the United States, it is hard for conservationists to develop a unified viewpoint on what management in the territory should look like, says the Yukon Conservation Society’s Sebastian Jones.

Officially, the conservation society is opposed to hunting of grizzly bears and their platform is essentially the same as Greetham’s, but Jones said that while some of their members feel very strongly supportive of that position, others are okay with the current status quo.

“We definitely have members who would like to see a total end to grizzly bear harvest in the Yukon,” Jones told the Star.

“And we have members who are quite content with the status right now. So, it’s kind of all over the place.”

Jones did say that from recent surveying efforts and DNA testing he is aware of, the old population estimates from the 1980s and ’90s are likely still close to accurate.

“From what I can gather, it’s probably not a bad estimate,” Jones said. “But, yeah, we don’t know the exact number.”

The real question, according to Jones, is whether these population estimates matter. It may be more important to ask if they need to be worried about the overall impact of the number of bears killed in the hunts.

“From a scientific or biological perspective, I don’t think that that’s a big concern,” he said.

“There’s not a tremendous number of grizzly bears killed in the Yukon every year.”

But where the Grizzly Bear Preservation Society and some members of the conservation society are coming from, the protection of the species goes beyond simply whether hunting is sustainable.

“The thing about grizzly bears is that it’s a lot more than just the science,” Jones said.

“It’s a really difficult topic for conservation and environmental organization like YCS to address because it’s not just biology; it’s also our perspective towards them.”