Canadian enviro groups are getting upset over a plan to remove a few dozen grizzly bears from British Columbia and reintroduce them to the Selway-Bitterroot wilderness of Idaho and Montana. This is just the latest effort to use Canadian wildlife to replenish depleted American populations; the U.S. government has already taken Canadian lynx and gray wolves for reintroduction programs. “Americans have this idea of Canada as untrammeled wilderness just teeming with whatever wildlife gets finished off down there. But we’re on a slide toward the grizzly becoming endangered, too,” said Michael Sawyer of the Castle-Crown Wilderness Coalition. “There’s definitely some resentment at the way you people treat our wilderness as a sort of ‘Wolves ‘R’ Us,'” said one provincial environmental official. Still, according to leading Canadian wildlife biologists, B.C. has an abundance of the bears, upward of 10,000, and the removal of a few won’t cause harm.
