Alberta hunts black bears to save caribou. Its own wildlife chief says it won't work.

Alberta's plan to hunt black bears with dogs to protect caribou recovery is drawing sharp criticism from the province's former top caribou manager, who says the strategy has no scientific basis.

The regulation, first introduced last year under Forestry and Parks Minister Todd Loewen, frames bear hunting as predator management for caribou conservation. But Dave Hervieux, who managed Alberta's caribou recovery efforts for more than four decades before retiring in 2024, says the connection doesn't exist.

"There's no scientific background or support for hunting black bears with dogs as a means to aid caribou," Hervieux said. He points to the geographic reality: of the 23 wildlife management units where bear hunting with dogs is permitted, 10 contain no caribou range whatsoever, and another two have "almost no" caribou. "These units likely never had caribou historically," he said.

Woodland caribou numbers in Alberta have collapsed over decades, a crisis the province has addressed primarily through wolf culls. Hervieux says that wolf-management delivery "has been sufficient to stabilize and in many cases increase caribou populations," but black bears present a different problem entirely. "There's virtually no evidence of consequential predation by black bears on caribou calves in Alberta, or many other parts of woodland caribou range in Canada," he said.

Mark Boyce, an ecology professor at the University of Alberta, echoed the skepticism. "You will not find a biologist that would go along with that unless they're employed by the hunting and fishing branch of the provincial government," Boyce said.

Hervieux emphasized that true caribou recovery requires addressing habitat loss, not perpetual predator control. Wolf culls are a temporary crisis-management tool, he said, but cannot substitute for restoring the landscape conditions caribou need to survive.