The Zodiac glides along the water, nudging up against the bank of a river that flows into the heart of the Fiordland Recreation Area on the central coast. The passengers step out and wade through a lush estuary blossoming with purple lupines and knee-deep in Lyngby’s sedge, a favourite springtime food of coastal grizzlies. Here and there, the fertile alluvium is freshly overturned where a grizzly has clawed the ground to uncover succulent silverweed roots. A quick scan of the broad floodplain with binoculars reveals two grizzlies methodically eating their way along the forest’s edge, their distinctive shoulder humps shimmering with blond-brown fur. Camera shutters click furiously.

More and more foreigners are paying top dollar for the opportunity to see a magnificent grizzly in the wild. British Columbia, though, still permits the sport killing of an animal that is highly evocative of what remains of our wilderness and is regarded as a keystone indicator of ecosystem health. Last year, a record-setting 430 grizzlies died for sport, for animal control, or from poaching, yet the complex science used by government to establish hunting quotas remains at the heart of one of the most controversial wildlife-management issues in Canada. That’s why environmentalists, First Nations, and bear-viewing companies believe the province is risking international shame over the hunting of grizzlies, considered by the federal Species at Risk Act, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, and the B.C. Conservation Data Centre to be a species of special concern.

A recent public-opinion poll that says most British Columbians—73 percent—want the provincial government to end the hunt is adding fuel to the controversy. The poll was commissioned by Pacific Wild, a nonprofit group started last year by Ian McAllister after his split from the Raincoast Conservation Society, an environmental group he helped found more than 15 years ago.

“I think the results of this poll are pretty compelling,” says McAllister, who, in his fight to end sport hunting of grizzlies on the central coast, spearheaded a successful $1.35-million buyout of a guide-outfitter’s coastal hunting licence. “Ending the sport hunt will have a positive spinoff for a whole range of other species, and it’s the least we can do for grizzly bears.”

Armed with the results of the poll, conservationists, First Nations, and grizzly-bear-viewing operators plan to turn up the pressure on government to halt the hunt, arguing that bears are worth more alive than dead, that most people don’t support the hunt on ethical grounds, and that the science underpinning the hunt is weak.