The Bears of Knight Inlet

One of the highlights of our recent "Explore BC" tour was visiting the grizzly's of the Knight Inlet.
On the north tip of Vancouver Island lies Telegraph Cove, a tiny settlement with a population of about 20. In former days Telegraph Cove was home to a lumber mill and a salmon saltery, nowadays it is a tourist hub for all kinds of outdoor activities, particularly whale watching and grizzly bear tours.

Since space is limited and this is a highly sought after tour during the summer, we had signed up for our tour with Tide Rip Tours long before we started our journey.

Very early in the morning, considering that it was Sunday...;-) we were at the marina and got some last minute instructions. Then off we went in our speed boat heading towards Knights Inlet. The boat ride takes about 2 1/2 hours, but with breakfast served, interesting stories told by our knowledgeable guide, and extraordinary beautiful landscape around us, the time just flew by.

After arriving at the Knight Inlet area we switched from our speed boat to a skiff. With this specially built skiff we slowly chugged through the shallow inlets. Close to the spot were bears can be seen we turned off the motor, the guides gently lowered themselves into the water, which was rather shallow, and quietly pushed the boat further into the inlet.

Patiently we waited, anticipating bears jumping out of hiding at any minute....and waited...and waited...we saw a cute deer family and water planes bringing in guests to a remote lodge, but no bears. Ever so slowly, a hint of disappointment was tangible among us.

The tide was leaving and our time was short and when we had almost lost hope, they came!
Mama bear with two cubs, almost as tall as her.

Due to the tide we had to leave the inlet a bit and the bears were quite a ways way, munching on a tree,

but then the curious cubs came closer and closer.

And finally ran into the water to play!

Mama was always watching to make sure the cubs were safe.

Eventually they had enough of playing in the water,

A quick shake at the beach and off they went, disappearing into the forest as quickly as they had appeared.

What an experience!
After the boat ride back, where we passed the time by dozing in the sun on the back deck of our boat, we enjoyed an Orca Pale Ale at the Killer Whale Cafe..well deserved I think!

October Conservation Tip

October is Vegetarian Awareness Month

Wow, I wasn't even aware that we have an awareness month....;-)
So I thought I should seize the opportunity to answer the question all vegetarians get asked quite frequently: Why are you Vegetarian? Early on this question was quickly answered, I feel sorry for the animals. During my education to become a veterinarian in Germany I had to work at a slaughterhouse, it was part of the education since a graduated veterinarian is automatically a meat inspector. Being passionate about animals before, the time working at the slaughterhouse did the rest. Nowadays the answer is much longer. "Ethical" reasons are still one of the strongest.
And it's not only the slaughtering that bothers me, it's the whole way of how animals are kept and treated throughout their odyssey. Studies have proven that pigs are smarter than dogs, science finally has attested that animals are able of cognitive thinking and have emotions....would you keep your dog his or her whole life in a crate that hardly allows your dog to turn? Never see daylight, never run or play? Would you?? Let's not even talk about how chicken, turkeys or cows are kept and treated.

Ethical reasons are just my personal thing, but environmental reasons should concern everybody.
If you google "factory farming environment" you get about 1,290,000 results in 0.47 seconds....I didn't read all of them but a fair bit and it's scary! There are a lot of different interpretations but most state the same facts, I tried to put together the ten most important:

1. About 10 billion animals, not including fish farms, in the United States are raised for dairy, meat and eggs each year.
2. More than 250 million acres of US forests have been clear-cut to create land for producing feed for livestock.
3. Globally, deforestation for animal grazing and feed crops is estimated to emit 2.4 billion tons of CO2 every year. The cut forests are badly missed in the negation of CO2
4. 70% of the grain that is produced in the US is fed to farm animals
5. The Smithsonian Institution has stated that the equivalent of SEVEN football fields of land is bulldozed every single minute to create more land for farming animals.
6. The use of fossil fuels on farms to grow feed and to intensively raise land animals for food emits 90 million tons of CO2 worldwide every year.
7. Almost half of all water used in the US goes into the meat, dairy and egg production. Between 1,800 and 2,400 gallons of water is needed to produce 1 lb of meat, only 25 to 39 gallons are needed to produce 1 lb of wheat. In other words one would save more water by not showering for 6 months than one would save by not eating a pound of meat!
8. The waste lagoons of factory farms aka Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations or in short CAFOs not only pollute our groundwater, but deplete it as well. Many of the farms use the groundwater for cleaning, cooling, and drinking.
9. The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) reports that roughly 80 % of ammonia emissions in the US come from animal waste. Atmospheric ammonia can disrupt aquatic ecosystems, ruin soil quality, damage crops, and jeopardize human health.
10. Factory farming accounts for 37 percent of methane (CH4) emissions. Methane has more than 20 times the global warming potential of CO2. (2,3,4)

To get a real visual understanding of the environmental impact, please have a look at these photos:

GRAIN- Factory Food From Above

Unfortunately, that's not it. To ethics and environment now also comes the topic of health.
With health I'm not addressing issues as too much saturated fats, cholesterol or else, as this is in everybody's own hand. No, I'm more thinking of what a "carnivores" eat with their meat that they are not aware of:

• Dairy cows can be given growth hormones, recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), in order to increase their milk production. But often this increased milk production leads to mastitis (infection of the udder) which then is treated with antibiotics...Eventually the cows productivity declines, and they are slaughtered for beef. Beef cattle may also be treated with hormones, estradiol, testosterone, and progesterone, to increase and expedite growth. The use of these hormons in dairy cows and cattle  has been shown to significantly increase the risk of breast, prostate, and colon cancer in beef consumers. Producers are not required to list the use of hormones on product labels. 
• Some zoonotic diseases (diseases that can spread from animals to humans and vice versa)  like BSE/ Creutzfeld Jacob Disease could only cause that much havoc, because someone down the factory farm aisle got the idea to feed dairy cows and cattle animal meal. Not only are bovines strict herbivores, the animal meal was from sheep that had to be put down because of Scrapie ( the sheep form of BSE). At that point nobody knew that the pathogen can jump between species, but just the idea of feeding cows animal meal is simply revolting
• Now to the antibiotics, since the 1950s, antibiotics have been used at factory farms to increase the rate of growth in animals. Today, an estimated 70 % of the antibiotics used in the U.S. are given to farm animals for non-therapeutic purposes. Since the antibiotic are long out of the body once the animal gets slaughtered all is fine, right? Unfortunately not: It is not the antibiotics directly that are posing the problem but using antibiotics in this way can lead to drug-resistant bacteria; as a result, certain bacterial infections have already become or are on their way to becoming untreatable in humans. Antibiotic resistant infections kill 90,000 Americans every year.

Do I propose everybody should stop eating meat? No, but maybe consume it a bit more consciously.
If possible, choose meat from a farmer you know and who raises the animals properly and without antibiotics. Try buying organic. How about following the "Meatless Monday" rule.
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) published a very informative statistic:
 Over a one year period,
-if you eat one less burger a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for 320 miles or line-drying your clothes half the time.
-if your four-person family skips meat and cheese one day a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for five weeks – or reducing everyone’s daily showers by 3 minutes.
-if your four-person family skips steak once a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for nearly three months.
-if everyone in the U.S. ate no meat or cheese just one day a week, it would be like not driving 91 billion miles – or taking 7.6 million cars off the road.(7)

Small adjustments can help a lot! And thank you for reading the blog, it means a lot to me...

Over a year:
If you eat one less burger a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for 320 miles or line-drying your clothes half the time. ¹⁰
If your four-person family skips meat and cheese one day a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for five weeks – or reducing everyone’s daily showers by 3 minutes. ¹¹
If your four-person family skips steak once a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for nearly three months. ¹²
If everyone in the U.S. ate no meat or cheese just one day a week, it would be like not driving 91 billion miles – or taking 7.6 million cars off the road. ¹³
- See more at: http://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/a-meat-eaters-guide-to-climate-change-health-what-you-eat-matters/reducing-your-footprint/#sthash.OUf3QAoE.dpuf

Sources and further reading:

Over a year:
If you eat one less burger a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for 320 miles or line-drying your clothes half the time. ¹⁰
If your four-person family skips meat and cheese one day a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for five weeks – or reducing everyone’s daily showers by 3 minutes. ¹¹
If your four-person family skips steak once a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for nearly three months. ¹²
If everyone in the U.S. ate no meat or cheese just one day a week, it would be like not driving 91 billion miles – or taking 7.6 million cars off the road. ¹³
- See more at: http://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/a-meat-eaters-guide-to-climate-change-health-what-you-eat-matters/reducing-your-footprint/#sthash.OUf3QAoE.dpuf

Over a year:
If you eat one less burger a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for 320 miles or line-drying your clothes half the time. ¹⁰
If your four-person family skips meat and cheese one day a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for five weeks – or reducing everyone’s daily showers by 3 minutes. ¹¹
If your four-person family skips steak once a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for nearly three months. ¹²
If everyone in the U.S. ate no meat or cheese just one day a week, it would be like not driving 91 billion miles – or taking 7.6 million cars off the road. ¹³
- See more at: http://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/a-meat-eaters-guide-to-climate-change-health-what-you-eat-matters/reducing-your-footprint/#sthash.OUf3QAoE.dpuf

(1) Compassion over Killing
(2) Facts about factory farming
(3) Collective Evolution
(4) Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
(5) NYU Langone Medical Center
(6) Farm Sanctuary
(7) EWG Meat Eaters Guide