B.C. conservation group buys land for grizzly love corridor

A conservation group in British Columbia is expanding a pathway that connects two communities of grizzly bears in the hope that, upon meeting, the bears decide to mate.
 
The Nature Conservancy of Canada has added 150 hectares of land, which it purchased for $1.14 million, to the Frog Bear Conservation Corridor.
 
The added land will make it easier, in particular, for the isolated South Selkirk grizzly to follow the path toward the larger bear population to the east. This is expected to encourage breeding between the two groups, which would in turn lead to a higher, more stable population of grizzlies in southeastern British Columbia.
 
Human development has, in many cases, isolated groups of animals from each other, says Michael Proctor, grizzly bear biologist and lead researcher of the Trans-border Grizzly Bear Project. “Enabling grizzly bears and other species to be inter-connected between mountain ranges and across regions might be the single best thing we can do to provide options for species, ecosystems and nature to adapt to climate change.”
 
Increasing the size of the conservation corridor is also expected to decrease the risk of “human-bear conflict,” says Nancy Newhouse, Canadian Rockies program manager for the Nature Conservancy of Canada.
 
The region is also home to a wide array of other rare species that could benefit from added protection, such as the northern rubber boa, great blue heron, American bittern, western screech owl and the endangered northern leopard frog.
 
A number of conservation groups, with the help of TD bank, came together to pay for the new land.