Black bears in British Columbia face an impossible reality: find new places to live, without being near people, while we continue to remove habitat and ecological connectivity from the landscape. It’s a struggle that journalist and documentarian Paul Johnson wanted to profile – in hopes of making a change.

Bears in our Backyards: The Struggle to Survive with Humans, is Johnson’s latest full-length documentary, and features extensive footage of black bears in British Columbia, along with interviews from experts, advocates, and government officials. The documentary is poignant, and shows the precarious situation we’ve created for black bears – and how our attitudes toward wildlife coexistence can set us all up for success, or failure.

Paul joins Defender Radio to share more about what motivated him to create the documentary, how his time as a television journalist with Global BC shapes his views of the issue, and what we can all do to create the future for ourselves and black bears that we want to see.

SHOW NOTES:

View Bears In Our Backyards: The Struggle to Survive With Humans (trailer and rent/buy options): https://vimeo.com/ondemand/466402

Connect with Paul on X/Twitter: https://x.com/PJReporter/

The episode art image is a still from Bears in our Backyards, provided by Paul Johnson.

Want to suggest topics for Defender Radio? Reach out to us at DefenderRadio@Gmail.com, by visiting DefenderRadio.com or engaging host Michael Howie on social media via Instagram (www.instagram.com/howiemichael) or Facebook (www.Facebook.com/DefenderRadio).

Defender Radio is produced by The Fur-Bearers (www.TheFurBearers.com), a charitable non-partisan organization whose mandate is to advocate on behalf of fur-bearing animals in the wild and in confinement, promote coexistence solutions in communities and protect the habitats of fur-bearing animals across Canada. You can follow The Fur-Bearers on Instagram (www.instagram.com/furbearers), Twitter (www.twitter.com/furbearers) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/FurFree).