TRANSCRIPT: EPISODE 4

COMMON GROUND

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(NICHOLAS SCAPILLATI, HOST, GRIZZCAST) 

Nearly 1000 kilometers away from the nearest ocean lies the largest Inland Temperate Rainforest on Planet Earth.

A 7 million hectare realm split between two countries, this ancient ecosystem covers central and southeastern British Columbia, stretching into parts of Idaho, Montana and Washington State. 

A spectrum of colour illuminates ancient roots. Aqua and shadows of fern green, this is a place of natural poetry - you can almost hear stories being shared amongst these creaking ancient cedars and towering hemlocks.

An underworld network of magic passing through their root systems, this is a place of science and connection.

Endangered southern mountain caribou, known as “Grey Ghosts”, have passed through, searching for rare rainforest lichens that drape from the limbs of old growth that have stood rooted in this valley for thousands of years.

Grizzly bears have walk this damp earth like shadows, descending to the rushing rivers below to fish for Kokanee salmon. This is a place to observe strength, to discover kindred spirits: Welcome to the Inland Temperate Rainforest.

<<intro chime>>

You’re listening to GrizzCast by the Grizzly Bear Foundation. As we continue to share these stories, please consider supporting GrizzCast with a financial gift 

by visiting our donation page today –  to help safeguard the lands grizzly bears roam, the food they eat, and the wild we share. 

In the Kootenay region of British Columbia, a new way of life has emerged– for both bears and humans - from the monumental policy decision to end the hunting of grizzly bears in BC to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sitting at Wild Bear Lodge, formerly known as Grizzly Bear Ranch, I am joined by Julius Strauss, a former war correspondent, wilderness guide and activist. 

We are on the Lardeau River in the traditional territory of the Ktunaxa (pronounced ‘k-too-nah-ha’) and Sin ikst (pronounced ‘sin-ike-st’) people, about an hour away from the oldest community in the Kootenays ----- Kaslo, B.C.

This area is known to the Ktunaxa Nation as ‘Qatsu,’ ‘the land between the snow and the water.’

It's a pleasure to be here at Grizzly Bear Ranch with you, Julius. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what we hear in the background and what we see here at Grizzly Bear Ranch. 

(JULIUS STRAUSS, GUEST) 

We are on the Lardeau River which is this really quite unusual interior river that hasn't been modified in any way. There are no dams on it. It's completely natural, and it's been like this since the last ice age, pretty much moving up and down this valley. 

And we're in the Selkirk mountains. We've got the Purcells just off to the east and then, further over, the Rockies and then on the other side, we've got the Monashees. So we're sort of in the southeastern part of BC in the mountains surrounded on all sides by mountains.

(NICHOLAS) 

In the only interior temperate rainforest in the world. 

(JULIUS) 

That's right. That's right. And, so, a lot of people have obviously heard about the Great Bear Rainforest and coastal rainforests.

This ecosystem is absolutely unique. And it's something that took me a while to understand. It is the only place like this in the world. So, it feels a little bit coastal in some ways.

It's absolutely unique. It's got much more snow in the winter. The temperatures are different. The summer's are a little bit drier. But it's got those combinations. Yeah, it's a remarkable place to live. And we're extremely lucky because obviously we have bears, which is kind of central to our business and our thinking and our way of life. But also we have lots and lots of other animals like wolves and cougars and bobcat and lynx and wolverines and-

(NICHOLAS) 

pine marten like we saw today.

(JULIUS) 

The marten that we saw today. Yeah, we really have the sort of highlights of the Western Canadian megafauna, which is incredible.

(NICHOLAS) 

And this is a great place to have a bear viewing operation, not only because of the alpine and the grizzly bear habitat, but also because this river is a Kokanee salmon river.

(JULIUS) 

Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's, we are in the interior, and it's not quite as productive as some of the coastal ecosystems. But we have a salmon run--in a good year we have about 400,000 salmon in this river. They're much smaller salmon than they are on the coast. And if--

(NICHOLAS) 

They're not a sea run.

(JULIUS) 

That's exactly right. They are landlocked salmon. And that brings the bears down, typically in September and October. And the rest of the year the bears are obviously around, but they're just in different places. It's, yeah, we've been running a bear viewing operation here for 12 or 13 years now. It's a little bit of work. There are lower densities than there are in some places, especially some of the coastal areas of BC and Alaska. 
But that means that the sort of old fashioned skills of tracking and figuring stuff out and working out what the bears are doing and where they're moving, we have to be highly developed in those skills in order to give our guests an experience that would match something that's on the coast. So we have to work a little bit harder for it. But the results, I think, are every bit as impressive.

(NICHOLAS) 

I think the word that came to mind today for me was extreme bear viewing. [Julius laughs]. So we're down by the creek here where, you know, we, you could watch bears feasting on fish. But then you're moving up through the forests and seeing huckleberry habitat, and you're getting into the alpine and you're seeing places where they're digging for lilies and digging out ground squirrels. So you can see a lot of different activities that grizzly bears do, and their diet and how they're affecting the landscape, all in this one area.

(JULIUS) 

Totally. I mean, yeah, no, totally. And so I guess our bears, the bears that live here, they they work harder for their living. I mean, they have to be adaptable. The, some years the fish is better some years it's worse. Some years the huckleberry is better, some years it's worse. They move around a lot. 

(NICHOLAS) 

The name “Kokanee” comes from the Sinixt (pronounced ‘sin-ike-st’) word and meaning “red fish”. Kokanee have evolved from sockeye salmon populations and are known as the “salmon of the mountains”, a landlocked species that no longer migrate to the ocean and spend their entire lives in freshwater. 

(JULIUS) 

Yeah, I mean, so these Kokanee, they're considerably smaller than the normal salmon on the coast. 12 inches might be in an average in terms of their length. They used to go to the sea until the last ice age. They've been blocked off from the sea since the last ice age and Kootenay Lake has become their sea if you like--it's become the equivalent of their sea. So they spend most of their life in Kootenay Lake and then when they're four years old, almost all of them, almost all the spawning fish are four years old, then they head up the river here. Similarly to the coast, they find a nice spawning spot--they like a certain speed of water and a certain size of rock that is ideal for them. 

They find a nice spawning spot and they spawn and they die and that's a great, wonderful tragedy of the salmon. They spawn and then they die. And then the next spring, the little salmon head back into the lake, and the process starts all over again. And that's been going on for the last 10,000 years now.

(NICHOLAS) 

And that makes for a very unique bear viewing experience in the interior.

Living where the grizzly bear still feast on scarlet salmon and roam ancient mountains, 

Julius has a stride of humility about him…the kind you get when surrounded by timeless nature....but that humility is spiked with a strong sense of ethical justice - and the backbone to take the fight to the end. 

Maybe it’s because he has fought long and hard for the future of grizzly bears in British Columbia, or because he spent 15 years witnessing the horrors of war as a British-Hungarian war correspondent.

For nearly 15 years, Julius covered wars for the Daily Telegraph in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Russia....to name a few…

But it was September 1st, 2004, when things took a turn for the worst.

Julius was sent to cover a school siege on the first day of classes in Beslan, in southern Russia, where armed Islamic militants captured over a thousand hostages. 

Lasting three days, it is thought to be the deadliest school shooting in history claiming hundreds of lives, most of which were children.

<<music>>

In 2005, Julius and his future-wife Kristin, an Estonian journalist, bought the 32-acre property we are currently sitting in to start a new life...a life without war.

(JULIUS) 

The first war I ever covered was the Serbo-Croat war. I covered it very briefly. And then I covered Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya. I also covered quite a lot of terrorist attacks and that kind of thing. And that was my job. That was my full time job. That's how I made my living. And I have no regrets about it. But it's a hard job to do years in year out. It's hard psychologically. And by the end of that period, I was completely burnt out. I was having some serious issues--what now would just be diagnosed as PTSD. But back then it was a little bit more difficult because PTSD wasn't as recognized. A lot of the issues I was having were very physical. 

They weren't sort of the obvious things like flashbacks and nightmares, although I did have nightmares. And it took me a while to figure out that something is seriously wrong here, and it got worse and worse and worse. I mean, ultimately, I couldn't drive a car. I went more than a year without being able to drive a car. And there was a long period of denial and finally I said "No, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to take this on somehow". 

And that was one of the major motivators in coming to Canada and changing my life and trying to do something different. And I was very lucky. I mean, it didn't solve everything overnight or even within a year or two--it took time. But I felt fairly soon that I was on a better path. 

I don't think you have to be a total hippie to think that if you spend each day of your life surrounded by, you know the noise of the river and nature and watching animals, then it's going to, you're going to internalise something very different than if you spend each day of your life surrounded by human suffering and pain and death and so on. 

(NICHOLAS) 

And was there a moment when, almost like a spiritual experience, where you saw a bear and knew or understood the healing power of this, or just being in this place, and it kind of dawned on you that, "oh, I never realised the impact that this place would have on me"?

(JULIUS) 

I think, I think it took time. There were several moments along the way. There's something very, very primal about meeting a grizzly bear in the bush, especially when you don't have a gun. Or, and you know, remember I come from a background of conflict. I mean, I'm weapons trained. I can use a gun. I have a gun licence. It's not that I don't understand that mentality--I do. And actually, for the first year I was here, I often carried a gun when I was in the bush. But I learned after a while that I didn't like the effect it was having on me. I'm not talking about hunting now. I'm talking about self defence. And so I put the guns aside.

(NICHOLAS) 

The way you approached going into it.

(JULIUS) 

Yeah, the way I approached any potential conflict. It was very zero sum. It's, you know, I'd see a bear and I'd say to myself, "If that bear takes 10 steps towards me, I'm going to shoot it". And then I realised after a while, I don't have to approach a situation like that. The bear is not approaching the situation like that. 

As time went by, I had a few close calls with bears. But each time I came away, and my overriding feeling was the bear let me off. The bear could have hurt me. I'd certainly done something wrong to provoke the situation or hadn't been paying attention or had done the wrong thing. But the bear had sort of given me a break and said, "You know what, Julius, you know, I'm not going to push on my advantages today. I'm going to let you walk away from this". And that was-- ultimately, it led to this very, very different sense of nature. So I didn't see nature as an opponent--as something that was out to challenge me or hurt me. I saw it as something that was much more restorative and something that I could be part of. 

I mean, it didn't happen quickly, but slowly, that added up to some kind of recovery for me. 

(NICHOLAS) 

Julius and Kristin ran the lodge together, side by side, for 15 years before we received some devastating news. In a letter written by Julius on February 16th, 2020.

Titled “Bearly Surviving”, Julius wrote

“I have some very sad news to share,”.

“In the early hours of yesterday morning my dear, darling wife Kristin, 

with whom I built Wild Bear Lodge and have run for the last fifteen years, 

died from cancer.

I was with her. 

She had been without symptoms and her sickness was not diagnosed until a month ago.”

“She said that her proudest achievement was what we had done at the lodge together, 

realizing our wilderness dream, 

and getting grizzly bear hunting banned in British Columbia.”

<<music>>

Together, Kristin and Julius were instrumental in the fight to end the Grizzly Bear Hunt, and their bear viewing experience is an important model for the expansion of grizzly bear viewing across the province. 

She is greatly missed.

The Grizzly Bear Foundation has set up a fund to support grizzly bear research in Kristin’s. Further details will be given at the end of this episode.

(JULIUS) 

You know, to be honest, we didn't really know what we were doing when we came here. We chanced upon this place. We saw it in the middle of the summer in July. We, Kristin and I, fell in love with it on the spot. And from then on, the only conversation was, how are we going to get it? How can we get some money? We didn't have enough money. We went to banks and they said no. We went to different banks and they said no. And we went through lots of different processes, trying to raise enough just to get a, you know, a proper downpayment and then get a mortgage. And we moved in. And we thought, now what do we do? What comes next? Oh dear, mortgage payments. So we didn't know what we were doing. The first year we took in a few people who wanted to camp here. We took in anybody, really.  We had a couple of rudimentary cabins. They stayed in the cabins. And we thought, what do we do now? Near the end of that first year, I sat down with Kristin. 

We were pretty much certain to be repossessed at that point. I sat sat down with Kristin and I said, "Look, let's forget about money because, clearly, we don't know what we're doing here. If we wanted to do, if money was no object, if we just--what is it we would want to do here if money was not a factor? What do we, what do we actually love about the place?" And the thing we both agreed on was bears--nature, but specifically bears. 

We'd seen a few grizzly bears by then, and we were always fascinated by them. We thought "Okay, let's try and make this into a little business if we can". And then conservation kind of came along with it. 
(NICHOLAS) 

A journalist and friend of Julius and Kristin, Anthony Lloyd, recently wrote about the transformation of their life in The Sunday Times…. 

“As a couple they were exceptional,” he writes. “Multiplying each other’s energies and focus in a way that had always made them inspiring company. 

Together, much more than each other’s complements, they were each other’s enablers, greater in the sum of their union than in the total of their individual worths. 

Julius and Kristin were - are -  fighters. 

They fought for truth, for their words and images to unveil events and document reality, even some of the darkest and harshest sides of humanity. The two of them brought stories to light and worked to educate people around the world, risking their lives to tell the stories around them.”

Building a home in the heart of the Kootenays, they brought their fight to safeguard critical habitat and defend one of the most majestic and powerful creatures on Earth - the grizzly bear.

For nearly two decades, people from around the world fought alongside people like Julius and Kristin to end the grizzly bear trophy hunt in B.C.  In December of 2017, the steady and dedicated campaign was at last won - the provincial government banned the hunting of grizzly bears across British Columbia. 

(JULIUS) 

We had a local grizzly bear--she was very photogenic. She was fairly used to people. We could watch her. I learned a lot of what I know about grizzly bears from that one bear. She was a wild bear. But she was fairly forgiving if you made a mistake. She wasn't going to punish you instantly. And we became more and more engrossed with the whole bear thing. And then that bear was shot by a trophy hunter. About five years ago now.

(NICHOLAS) 

Like losing a business partner.

(JULIUS) 

Well, it was losing your business partner but it was far more emotional than that. It was that sense of "Oh, hang on a minute. This is just a grizzly bear doing her own thing. The person who's shooting her is not even going to eat the bear. There's no purpose to this. It's absolutely senseless. It's just a senseless thing to do". 

(NICHOLAS) 

How do you, and you're an active member of the CBVA, the commercial bear interviewing Association, you were instrumental in the ending of the hunt here in British Columbia. How do you see the role of bear viewing ecotourism as a conservation tool--as an important economic and conservation tool?

(JULIUS) 

Well, I mean, one thing I do feel strongly is that when the grizzly bear hunt was banned, and  I'm extremely pleased that it was banned, some of the hunters turned around to us and they said, "Hang on a minute. We were giving $34,000 a year to grizzly bear conservation. You guys are not giving anything". And I feel very strongly that bear viewing operators, the bear viewing industry should not only give $34,000, or better, a multiple of that, by as many times as we can afford. It's very important that we don't sort of have this idea that you just get something for nothing--you can just cash in on the bears and then turn around and retire and walk the other way. So I think that as the bear viewing industry matures, it has a greater and greater responsibility towards conservation. I mean, the other train that is coming down the track towards us fast is climate change. So there's time pressure here as well. We don't ultimately know what's going to happen to grizzly bears with climate change. Some people say, "Oh, they're so adaptable, they'll be fine". I think that's far too simplistic. We just don't know. So putting in as much possible effort as we can now over the next several years could make an enormous difference. You know, from the work that you're doing, that there's a huge amount of work to do out there with bear conservation.

(NICHOLAS) 

I often say to people that people were so focused on the hunt, on ending trophy hunt.

(JULIUS) 

Yes

(NICHOLAS) 

And then, once that was out of the way, the tension dropped off a little bit. And then you realize bears are dealing with coexistence and food security, and bears are still dying. They have all kinds of challenges, and this sensational violence thing is out of the way. But there's lots that needs to be done if we want to have grizzly bears.

(JULIUS) 

Totally. And, you know, I mean, one of the things some people said to me during when we were campaigning to try and end the hunt is "Oh, the hunt's not the real issue. It's habitat loss. It's human encroachment". And, at one level, they're right. 

But the hunt was two really important things. First of all, it was low hanging fruit--it was something that was relatively easy to solve. Solving habitat loss in North America is a huge issue. But the second thing that's even more important for me and I argued with lots of biologists about this, because they said, "Oh, you're misguided" and so on, was sending a unanimous message that we care about grizzly bears--if we do, and all the polling suggests that we, as British Columbians, do care about grizzly bears, the vast majority of the crowd. 

(NICHOLAS) 

We have a value that transcends science and management.

(JULIUS) 

Absolutely. And we just care about the future of these animals. Now, if we do, then it's simply inconsistent to look after them for half the year and then shoot them for the other half of the year on the basis that they look good on a wall or whatever it is. But where I do agree with the critics, and, you know, critics of mine if you like, is that ending the hunt is not the be all and end all. 

It's a first step. It's an achievable and important first step, but it really is only a first step. And the other challenges that are coming are going to be more difficult. Ultimately ending the hunt we've saved, as you know, 300 to 350 grizzly bears a year. And that's great. And that's a relatively easy thing to do. But there's a lot of other problems going on. And that's going to take much more long term thinking. It's going to take working with policymakers. It's going to take raising money for these issues. And it's going to take persuading people that sacrifices might have to be made in the interest of grizzly bear conservation, whether that's closing the occasional trail or whatever it happens to be. We don't get anything from nothing. 

(NICHOLAS) 

And we saw that today, right? Like, we talked about this is such a great operation because you can see all the different ways that grizzly bears use this ecosystem. But during this journey, the thing I noticed as well is you're realising all the challenges they face. You know, you can see the climate change effects on the huckleberry and the whitebark pine. But then you can also see logging and ATV access--you could see all the issues right here at Grizzly Bear Ranch (now known as Wild Bear Lodge).

(JULIUS) 

Totally. And logging. I don't want to be too much of a hypocrite on this. We built our house from wood. We use wood to heat. We need wood. But intelligent logging is something this province really, really needs. There's a lot of clear cut logging going on around here, right at the moment, and it's causing a huge amount of damage, not just to grizzly bears, but to the entire ecosystem. 

We do have to log in the modern world--I accept that. But I think there's more considered ways we can do it. I think there's probably more efficient ways we can do it. And also, at this point, the idea of logging old growth, to me it seems that we should be weaning ourselves off that. At present estimates, old growth is gone within the next 20 to 25 years in BC anyway. 

We might as well make those painful changes now, as wait 20 years when we're going to be forced to make the changes anyway. So logging is a big issue. And I'm not one of those people who believes it all has to stop overnight. But I definitely think the industry needs to be looked at very carefully. Moving around this environment, whether on foot or in a vehicle, or whatever you see a lot of it. 

(NICHOLAS) 

Grizzlies walk this land managed by two countries. But they do not recognize land borders the way we do.

This is the largest Inland Temperate Rainforest on Planet Earth. ...currently being logged as fast as the Amazon Rainforest. 

This region is a critical habitat for at-risk species like the southern mountain caribou and the grizzly bear. They need access to large, connected territories that permit them to thrive.. 

Yet lone trees stand alone in clearcuts, surrounded by a scarred and ravaged landscape. Competing land use priorities threaten the long term survival of these iconic species.

(NICHOLAS) 

You know so much about all the conservation issues that affect this area where you're running your business. And you have a voice for that.

(JULIUS) 

Yeah. I mean, one of the ironies, of course, is that the reason I moved to the bush is to get away from it all, is to get away from politics and policy, human conflict--all these things that-- You know, I had this naive idea that you Move into the middle of nowhere, and you're on your own, and you can just mind your own thing. But of course you can't.

For two reasons:

 First of all, wherever you go, there are people in there and there's politics, but also my motivation as a journalist was to try and effect some form of positive change. It's very difficult in the modern world to effect positive change. But I do very strongly believe we can all do a little bit. We can all do a little bit. So coming here, I naively thought, "Okay, well, you know, finished with that, now I'll just kind of sit back and watch it all".  But when you see somebody cutting down the hillside outside your house, or when you see somebody shooting a grizzly bear for no particularly good reason, you still have those same motivations in you, and so I guess I've sort of felt compelled to get off my ass and try and do something. And it's been awesome, because there are lots and lots and lots of other people out there trying to do something as well.

And once you realize that, you realize you're not on your own in this. You know, there's lots of other people. It might be in their own little silos, but there's lots of people, and you can find those people, and you can come up with creative solutions. And I know it's a cliche, but you can often find things where everybody wins a little bit. It doesn't have to be a win/loss situation. So I still want to live in the bush. I don't want to leave here.  I love this area. But do you have to be involved in the issues of the day? I think you probably do. I think you have to take that on. 

(NICHOLAS) 

That's one of the things I like about GrizzCast, is that it tells stories of different walks of life and how people found their role in conservation. You know, it's the issue of our age--how we're going to deal with climate change, how we're going to address the rapid loss of species. And yet these stories talk about those challenges, but then also talk about how rewarding it is.

First Nations, individuals, organizations, businesses and communities have fought long and hard for effective conservation policy and land-use regulations to ensure the protection of ancient old-growth forest ecosystems and the many at-risk species - like the grizzly bear - that depend on them. 

Over the last few decades proposals for benchmark areas, cross-valley corridors and an Inland Rainforest Grizzly Bear Sanctuary have been proposed, but most remain on-going.

We remain in one of the longest battles in history to save an iconic symbol of the North American wilderness - the grizzly bear.  

Fighters like Julius and Kristin, are tirelessly advocating for crucial wildlife conservation corridors battling forest fires, destructive logging, mining, industrial hydroelectric development and the effects of climate change.

In a complicated fight to save this majestic species, this is a place where common ground can be found.

(JULIUS) 

We owe it to the bears, and we owe it to this place to do more. So initially, that became lobbying against grizzly bear hunting. And over time, it's developed into a much bigger thing, or a bigger thing. I wouldn't say it's huge. It's not. But what we do is we take 100 bucks from each of our guests, and we put it into a fund. And every year we apportion that out. We do a little bit of political work. Still meeting politicians explaining the benefits of bear viewing and the rest. 

We have a facial recognition project that we're doing about grizzly bears, which is really cool. And hopefully we'll get something out of that. We give a bit of money to local people, especially farmers. So we pay for a lot of the bear spray that is given out in this valley. And we do it on the basis that you watch a sort of 45 minute safety film, and then you'll get a can of bear spray for free. So we finance a lot of that. And then we do a few other little initiatives on the side as well. And for me, and for Kristin, you know, it's a, it's a really, it's a really great pleasure to have a business--it's not wildly profitable, but we're still here--that allows us to spend a little bit of the time that we have and a little bit of money regenerated on these kind of conservation efforts. So it's very, it's very important to us that that bit.

(NICHOLAS) 

It sounds like it's very rewarding too.

(JULIUS) 

I feel to this day very strongly that, as humans, we are part of nature. We can look at it from the outside and it's an intriguing and fascinating business. But we're actually part of it. We can walk those same trails. We can be part of that same ecosystem. We don't have to be in opposition to it. 

(NICHOLAS) 

Thank you for listening to Episode 4 of GrizzCast. You can find our donation page, behind the scenes photos and videos, and grizzly bear resources on our website at grizzcast.grizzlybearfoundation.com. 

From the Grizzly Bear Foundation, this is GrizzCast.

GrizzCast is hosted by the Grizzly Bear Foundation - a charitable organization solely dedicated to the welfare of the grizzly bear. 

I’m Nicholas Scapillati, the Executive Producer and your host.

This episode was written and edited by our Producer, Lindsay Marie Stewart. 

Our Story Producer is Leia Hutchings. 

Interviews were recorded on location in the Kootenays by Kas Shield.

ALO composed our theme music.

Original solo acoustic guitar music is by Jon den Boer.

GrizzCast’s original album art is by Marie Wyatt, with graphic design by Lindsay Marie Stewart. 

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