Square Kilometre Area: River Drainage

Coast Mountains Dept: Although rumours of grizzly bears in B.C.'s Garibaldi-Pitt Population Unit GBPU have abounded for years, there has been no solid indication that they still exist in the mountains directly north of the urban riot that is the Lower Mainland. According to Apps, the DNA-based survey methods he used are well established and have proven successful in demonstrating the presence of grizzly bears, especially a resident population. After four years of sampling, he found 260 individuals across roughly 40,000 square kilometres of potential grizzly bear range in the southern Coast Mountains, according to Vancouver Sun. At the time Apps conducted his survey, the B.C. government's population estimate suggested there were 18 grizzly bears in the Garibaldi-Pitt GBPU, so he expected to find at least a few grizzly bears wandering around in this 7,000-square-kilometre area, which includes the Pitt River drainage. You can imagine his surprise when he couldn't find evidence of a single grizzly bear. He concluded that the resident population of grizzly bears had been extirpated from this area and nobody was more surprised to find a grizzly bear splashing around in British Columbia's upper Pitt River this summer than biologist Clayton Apps. These results allowed him to estimate the number of grizzly bears in each of the four threatened GBPUs north of Vancouver. According to his research, there are approximately 52 grizzly bears in the Squamish-Lillooet GBPU west of Squamish and Pemberton, 147 in the southern end of the Southern Chilcotin Ranges GBPU north of Pemberton, and an isolated pocket of just 23 in and around Stein Valley Provincial Park, in the Stein-Nahatlatch GBPU. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.