Funding is legit, says grizzly biologist

Dear Editor:

For your interested readers, here is a more accurate assessment of the funding that supports the Trans-border Grizzly Bear Project than was provided by Kelsey Verboom in his recent article Jumbo Omission.

I, Michael Proctor, run the Trans-border Grizzly Bear Project in cooperation with research biologists from the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The Canadian arm of that effort gets its funding from many sources across the spectrum of interests in land use, including the timber industry, hunters through the B.C. Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation, wildlife research and management institutions such as the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and NGOs with wildlife conservation interests, such as Wilburforce.

It is a point of pride that we garnish support from this broad base of interests and that breadth of contributors ensures we do not cater to (or leave the wrong impression that we might cater to) any one philosophy except to produce the best science possible. Our motto is everyone gets the same answer.

Interestingly, the B.C. government and the Jumbo proponents paid for the original Jumbo grizzly bear survey which I carried out back in 1998. For the record, Wilburforce has contributed approximately 9% of our multiannual budget which is just on the average contribution from our 11 main contributors.

Michael Proctor

Trans-border Grizzly Bear Project