“You have to kind of be prepared to roll with punches because marketplaces change, people change. You learn that you have to change.” — Leonard Ellis 

As tourism and environmental priorities evolve, what does it mean to adapt? Few understand this better than Leonard Ellis.

Once a guide for big game hunting expeditions for deer, mountain goats, wolves, and even black and grizzly bears, Leonard, owner of Bella Coola Grizzly Tours, made a pivotal shift 25 years ago. As environmental awareness and social values began to change, he transitioned from hunting trips to immersive wildlife viewing experiences. Today, his company leads guided wildlife viewing, marine tours, and grizzly bear watching excursions.

Despite this shift, Leonard’s commitment to the natural environment in the Cariboo Chilcotin Coast region has remained constant. Throughout his 50-year career, he has always been motivated by a deep understanding of the need for balance, guided by his knowledge of wildlife management and a passion for the ecosystem as a whole. “Harvest is a good thing,” he says. A lifelong hunter, Leonard supports healthy wildlife populations, from grizzly bears to fish, but he cautions, “People want to save everything. It’s not necessarily the way to go. You save too much of one thing and then it eats everything else.” 

Leonard’s journey reflects a broader question: what should tourism’s relationship with wildlife look like? How can we know when we’re truly helping and not harming? His experience suggests that responsible tourism activities can participate in both preservation and sustainable wildlife management.

In this episode, you’ll also learn:

• How Bella Coola Grizzly Tours works to protect the ecosystem.
• What changes have shaped the region’s tourism industry over time.
• Why humans have a responsibility to manage natural areas. 
• The role of collaboration and education in achieving sustainable land management.
• Advice for business owners who are feeling pressured to make a transition. 

Show notes

Bella Coola Grizzly Tours —  A land and marine based tour operator offering guided marine tours, wildlife viewing and grizzly bear watching excursions, and lodging. 

Cariboo Chilcotin Coast Tourism Association — The regional destination management organization that leads tourism development and marketing in the Cariboo Chilcotin Coast Region.

Episode transcript

Leonard Ellis: 30 years ago, I was challenged to try to find the biggest grizzly bear in the world every week, you know, for, for a hunter, where they catch the biggest spring salmon that I could possibly catch, you know. And that’s all changed now. People are a lot less demanding on what they, they just want to be out in the fresh air, get some exercise, and so it’s actually quite a bit easier now.

David Archer: Welcome back to Travel Beyond where we partner with leading destinations to bring you inspiring solutions to the greatest challenges facing communities and the planet. I’m David Archer from Destination Think, recording from Haida Gwaii, the territory of the Haida Nation off the north coast of British Columbia in Canada.

We’re actively looking for the best examples of efforts to regenerate economies, communities, and ecosystems on this show. So please reach out if you have a story to share with us. You can contact me at david at destinationthink.com. Today we’re bringing you another perspective from the Cariboo Chilcotin Coast on what it means to live in balance with nature, and that includes the tourism industry.

Last time, Amy Thacker told us about the balance that she finds working on the farm amid her duties as CEO of the region’s Tourism Association, and how agriculture helps connect people with the land, including visitors. Today’s story is all about tourism and wildlife, and one tour operator in particular.

Leonard Ellis has had a fascinating tourism career that might inspire other business owners or tourism leaders who need to make a pivot or adapt to changing circumstances. His work as a guide has also given him a lot of knowledge in wildlife management. And as a resident of the region for about 50 years, he began as a hunting guide, leading expeditions to hunt big game like deer, mountain goats, wolves, and even bears, including black bears and grizzly bears.

But, about 25 years ago, Leonard decided to pivot his business, in part because of changing social norms, including pressure from environmental groups. And today, instead of hunting trips, Bella Coola Grizzly Tours leads wildlife viewing tours, guided marine tours, and grizzly bear watching. And at first, it might seem like a dramatic shift from guiding hunting expeditions to guiding groups of bear watchers.

And I think it’s worth saying that sometimes within sustainability movements, especially in cities like Vancouver, in BC, where I used to live. Hunting, and especially big game hunting, can make people very uncomfortable. This is a complex story, and I think Leonard brings us a nuanced perspective that urban dwellers might not hear very often.

What does it really mean to manage wildlife well? The answer seems to be in the details, and highly specific to the place. Leonard’s care and respect for wildlife and the ecosystems in the Cariboo Chilcotin Coast has been constant throughout his career, and he’s even helped to reintroduce grizzly bears to an area where previous outfitters had over harvested them, and now those bears have become seed for the next generations of their species.

And five decades in, people still love his trips. These days, most of the visitors to Bella Coola Grizzly Tours come from far away and live in cities where the chance of seeing a bear is almost nothing, so people get really excited. Here’s a clip where he describes a memorable moment from one of his tours.

Leonard Ellis: On an average day, we do like about a six hour tour and we, I just do the lower valley tours here. We usually take them out to the petroglyphs. We arrange with a First Nations guide to go up to the petroglyphs. And then through the big cedar tree walk, and then we’ll try to find them some spawning salmon, and on those spawning salmon, we’ll try to find them some grizzly bears too, you know, and people always want to see bears, so.

Um, sometimes you see them right in the front yard here, eating the cherries and apples out of our trees. And, uh, I left one night there, there was a bunch of people all sitting on the sundecks having a A glass of wine and this big old boar, grizzly bear, comes out to the cherry tree and he just starts picking away at the cherries.

Some of the people weren’t even sure what it was. It was huge, huge big boar. He put a nine foot boar. Oh my god. And people are, they’re just sitting there like they’re watching Walt Disney kind of thing. But, uh, yeah, the bears, this is all their habitat, the valley bottom, you know. And, uh, this is where they live and always have lived, so you gotta make room for them.

And, uh, I like them, you know, I don’t mind them eating our apples and stuff like that. We gotta Help each other along. We’re all here in the same Valley. You know, 

David Archer: I really like that attitude of we’re all here in the same valley wildlife included. And as the conversation unfolds, you’ll hear Leonard’s perspective on the complex relationships between people and animals and tourism and the region.

He shares what makes today’s tours lower impact than yesterday’s. And he also offers some advice for business owners who are feeling pressured to make a transition of, of any kind, really, it’s a great case study for a business pivot if there ever was one. So I hope you enjoy this episode, and I hope it makes sparks happen in your brain like it did for me.

Here is Josie Van Der Velden speaking with Leonard Ellis.

Leonard Ellis: Yeah, my name’s Leonard Ellis. I was born and raised in Ladner, BC, and I started fishing at an early age, uh, up the coast here, about 18 years old. We started coming up the coast here to, you know, up to the Alaskan border. And when we got up into the central coast area here, I could see so much beauty in the wilderness.

The halibut and the grizzly bears. So I kind of, I started to really like it up here, so I started coming back here quite a bit. Ended up getting a territory here, and started with, that’s in the old days when we were hunting, you know, that was how we did it. We hunted grizzly bear and black bear and mountain goat and wolf and deer, and then slowly it evolved into more ecotourism kind of thing, like what we’re doing now.

So this is what we call home now. I’ve been up here for, oh, 40, 40, 50 years now, something like that. Yeah, but it’s, it’s a good life. It’s always been just looking after people in the wilderness and that and keeping them safe and keeping them fed and happy and showing them the sights, you know, whether it’s hunting or fishing or, or the outdoors, um, just basically catering to accommodating them. 

Josie Van Der Velden: What makes this place feel like home for you? 

Leonard Ellis: It’s very much like the area I came from being in the Fraser Valley Delta where I was born and raised. And this is very much like the Fraser Valley, you know, it’s just a little bit smaller. By comparison, um, it’s a lot of cool stuff here, like you’ve got grizzly bears here, and lots of more wildlife, you know, mountain goats.

But it’s got a nice, uh, it’s got a nice, uh, climate, you know, fairly, fairly decent, very much like the lower mainland. People are very friendly, that was the first thing that I noticed, how friendly the people were. And, uh, accommodating, you know. And, uh, so, I just thought it would be a great place to set up and raise the kids.

And we originally first moved out to Ocean Falls. And set up there, I’d never been to Bella Coola before. But once I, we came over here working, I was stevedoring, loading raw logs onto the big freighters to go to Japan and that. And, uh, then I got a look at this place and I just went, wow, look at this. You know, beautiful highway coming in.

Government services, hospitals. We had nothing like that in Ocean Falls. So, uh, ended up in about 19 I guess it was 1992 I started basing out of Bella Coola. And I spent the ten previous years, uh, out in Ocean Falls. And, uh, Ocean Falls wasn’t happening. There was no road into it. It was really hard to market, so So, we ended up calling this home.

Josie Van Der Velden: It’s a good combination of access, but still pretty remote. 

Leonard Ellis: Yeah, yeah, it’s definitely wilderness, you know, compared to where most people come from. And, um, we’re very fortunate here. We have, you know, 110 volt power. We’re on city water. You’ve got internet, you’ve got all the TV channels and stuff like that, and you’ve got, you know, the hospital and the service hubs, you know, like government BC and service BC.

So it is quite unique and modern in that respect that you can, uh, conduct business that way, you know. 

Josie Van Der Velden: What would you say makes the Cariboo Chilcotin Coast region different from, from elsewhere in the world? 

Leonard Ellis: Well, I think it’s the freedom is what attracted me. Just, just the vast openness, the wilderness, the freedom that you have to move around here and, and, uh, Um, no fences kind of thing much, and, and just the wildlife comes and goes, and the variation of wildlife and plant life, and there’s so many different ecosystems in the Caribou Chilcotin that it’s really, really quite something.

Like, you’ve got the Bella Coola Great Bear Rainforest down here in the valley, and then you go up top, you’ve got pine trees and moose, and, and, uh, you know, horseback rides and stuff like that. So it’s quite, um, versatile in what it can offer. 

Josie Van Der Velden: Yeah, and even I like how you describe the freedom. It’s not just for humans It’s like freedom for all the species and the plants and animals the grizzly bear coming across.

Leonard Ellis: Oh totally. Yeah Yeah, you got mountain goats in the hills You can sit here with a spot and cope and see mountain goats beautiful big billy goats and then in the evening You know, you’ve got black bears and grizzly bears moving around. There’s a few wolves around too And deer, we’ve got just in the back there, I walked in the back the other day, and there’s four nice white tailed deer, you know, a little family buck and a doe and a couple fawns in the back, and then there’s black tailed deer and mule deer as well in the valley too, so you’ve got Quite a variation of wildlife, you know, and the wildlife viewing just lends itself pretty naturally to, uh, to what we do, you know.

Josie Van Der Velden: How does your, I mean, it feels weird to call it a job, I feel like it’s more like a lifestyle, but how has that made your life here and your career, made you feel more connected to nature? 

Leonard Ellis: Well, I’ve always kind of been, I feel, connected to nature, you know, wildlife. I’ve always loved the fish and wildlife.

And, uh, the fact that it’s around us all the time, it’s, it’s, industry’s changed. And when you’re in the industry a long time, change has happened. You know, and, and you just got to kind of roll with the punches. You know, there was the big push to close down the hunting and grizzly bear hunting and stuff like that, and they got their way, not that it was right or wrong, we’ll get to that, but, um, uh, you got to kind of roll with the punches if you want to stay in business.

You can’t stay hard and fast on one thing, you have to adjust and move a little bit, you know, to Accommodate the market, because it’s what the market desires is what you have to accommodate. There’s a lot of natural resource here in the valley and, uh, the wildlife is, uh, is one of the most, and the scenery, I mean, it’s just killer scenery too, you know, it’s really nice.

But the wildlife is what a lot of people are, are missing and in the cities they don’t have the wildlife, you know, the best they got is maybe a coyote or a, uh. Raccoon or something like that. So when they come up here and have the opportunity to see a grizzly bear from their front porch Well, it’s it’s pretty special. 

Josie Van Der Velden: A lot of skunks, urban skunks in my neighborhood.

Leonard Ellis: Yeah. 

Josie Van Der Velden: Yeah, it’s wildlife viewing right in your yard. 

Leonard Ellis: surprising what there is there’s blossoms and skunks and raccoons and all different kinds of things there sometimes. 

Josie Van Der Velden: Yeah. What do you think it’s like for a visitor? Like us, to come to Bella Coola for the first time. 

Leonard Ellis: I guess it’s quite an eye opener.

You know, it’s kind of a special little spot in the world, I think, that not many people have been to. You know, it’s just kind of getting, the word is getting out now more and more. That’s a good question. I know when I first came into the valley, I was pretty amazed at the scenery. Just the scenery is very, very breathtaking on a sunny day, you know, clear sunny day.

And then the people, you know, you’ve got the First Nations culture here [00:12:00] and stuff like that, and it’s just a, it’s got a special feel about it, you know, that you don’t find in other places. It’s got a real laid back, slowed down kind of feeling, and uh, it’s, it’s kind of special, I think. 

Josie Van Der Velden: For sure. We were just saying, as we were saying, does anyone else feel really calm?

Leonard Ellis: Yeah. 

Josie Van Der Velden: Usually the film sets are really frantic and I’m like, this is very different. 

Leonard Ellis: It’s almost so calm, it’s almost too calm. We call it, I’ve seen the sign one day up on top there, it was, it was Bella Coola and somebody scratched out Coola and Bella Coma. Yeah, it can be, it’s hard to get invigorated sometimes because it’s so laid back sort of thing. You know, you get so laid down. 

Josie Van Der Velden: How has the, I mean, you’ve been here for 45 years, going on 50 years. How has the region changed over that time? 

Leonard Ellis: It’s changed a lot. When I first got up into this region, you know, it was full bore on the logging, uh, full bore on the commercial fishing. Um, there was, uh, active airlines, you know, flying out to logging camps.

Logging camps were going full bore. And commercial fishing, gill netting, trolling, seining was really a big, uh, a big enterprise, you know, guys were making good money. The last hundred years in the province has just been like a gold rush on the resources, you know, in some respects to do with fishing, logging, no, no looking back sort of thing.

And now it’s really quiet. The Bay Motor Hotel, it basically went belly up because, you know, not enough business and it shut down and got burnt down. Um, It’s been a huge natural resource extraction over the last century kind of thing. And pretty soon Mother Nature just can’t take it anymore and then, then it’s got to kind of comes to slowly grinds to a halt, you know.

So yeah, lots has changed. Um, there’s not the commercial fishing now that there was. There’s barely a commercial fishery here now at all, just for gill netters a little bit, maybe one or two days. And, uh, logging is still going on a, on a, uh, far more refined scale. But not, nothing like it was. Um, these watersheds have been, hit very hard, you know, over the years and lost a lot of their, uh, lost a lot of their timber.

I wrestled with all that, but the thing we still do have is the natural beauty of the area, and that’s what we build our business on. 

Josie Van Der Velden: Tell us a little bit about BC Grizzly Tours. What, what types of trips do you guys do, and what kind of people do you attract? 

Leonard Ellis: We do, we do tours in the valley. We, we do boat tours.

My son, Daniel, he runs a nice 40 foot jet boat out there and he takes people up to 12 people at a time just out the, out the fjords there. And it’s really quite nice because you see, you have the opportunity to see humpback whales, killer whales. Dolphins, um, the beautiful scenery. You sometimes see salmon jumping, you know, stuff like that.

And then they go to the hot springs, beautiful natural, uh, set of hot springs out there that they, that they visit for an hour. And then they can walk up to the great big old cedar tree and, uh, spread out around that. It’s an eight hour tour and he serves a nice lunch on board. Uh, people quite enjoy it.

It’s a definite good dollar value for them. Then there’s the lower valley tours we do here just in the big old growth forest and stuff like that. Um, look around in the fields, not in the spawning creeks for grizzly bears and black bears. Just basically show people. People like to be guided because, you know, there’s always the fear of running into a grizzly bear without a guide sort of thing.

So, uh, it makes them feel a bit better if they’ve got it on a guided tour, you know. Mm hmm. And then there’s all kinds of helicopter tours a person can do up on the mountaintops and the glaciers and stuff like that. The beautiful Bellacoola River runs through here. People do a lot of fishing. Uh, it’s a port, you know, they launch their saltwater boats here and go on their own out fishing and, and, uh, for salmon and halibut and red snapper and prawns and crabs and everything like that.

So it’s, it’s a seafood paradise really for, for, uh, beautiful, fresh seafood, eh? 

Josie Van Der Velden: How did the business come to be? How did you, you know, you were telling us like that when you arrived, no one wanted this plot of land. Like how did you, what was your journey to start? Yes. 

Leonard Ellis: Well, what first brought us up here was the hunting guiding, and in the old days that was a very acceptable thing.

Clayton Mack originated the grizzly bear hunting out of Bella Coola, and, uh, it was a going concern. There was lots of people from down south that would come up here. Kirk Douglas, I think he came up here hunting with Clayton, and, uh, it’s a sustainable, uh, activity, actually. That kind of went by the wayside a few years ago, and then I, uh, We used boats for doing that, like we fixed up big old 75 foot seine boats, you know, and put guest cabins on the back and used them for getting around on the outer coast.

And then we could do our fishing and hunting. We sold that to the environmental group that bought us out to put us out of business. And then I ended up buying this piece of land here. It was 20 acres. And it was the piece of land that nobody wanted. It had big timber on it and it had been logged. And it was huge big stumps.

We just ended up splitting the stumps and breaking them apart and burning them. And then make it into nice pasture land. And then built some cabins and built a couple cabins. And people rented them out so we built a couple more. And People rented them out and pretty soon it just kind of evolved into what it is today.

So yeah, all the local people were quite happy that I cleaned up the property and made it look nice, you know. 

Josie Van Der Velden: Sort of sounds like a story of one door closing and another door opening. 

Leonard Ellis: Yeah, well, like I say, in business and stuff like that, you have to kind of be prepared to roll with punches because marketplace changes, people change, you learn that you have to change, you know.

And this actually was quite a, fairly easy change. It was a whole different client base, you know, that we had to develop. But it was the same kind of business where we were just accommodating people and looking after people and feeding people and touring them around. So, it’s uh, it’s kind of like you’re, You’re still hunting, but just, you’re just not shooting nothing, you know, except with a camera.Yeah. 

Josie Van Der Velden: Yeah, it’s a good way of putting it. Um, how does the, how does Bella Coola Grizzly Adventures work to protect the landscape that you’re operating in? 

Leonard Ellis: Well, we’ve always have been actively involved in the, Tourism associations and sitting on the boards of different land use groups and stuff like that since we started to get our input into it and try to have good input into it to, to say, you know, I hate to use the word save, but to, you know, to preserve the habitat is so important, you know, to preserve the habitat for the fish and wildlife and the humans, you know, so that it, it keeps going.

Sustainability is the key word, you know, everything’s got to be sustainable. To keep going, we’ve, we’ve learned that, you know, the human, human factor is quite a factor, and we’ve, we’ve learned a lot in the last 100 years or 200 years since we’ve started, uh, extracting resources and what, what’s good for the habitat and what’s not good for the habitat.

And some of it is deadly for the habitat. So we have to be very careful on how we go about things. And like I say, we’ve learned from our mistakes, you know. But still, it’s still hard to do it right, you know, because a lot of times it just boils down to the almighty dollar. So with us living on the land, we see it firsthand, you know, the effects of, of, uh, mismanagement, and we try to make it right, you know, so that it’s got to be a nice healthy balance.

You know, everything’s got to balance out. There can’t be too much of one thing and not enough of the other. You know, like wildlife, you got to have a nice balance of deer and moose and caribou and stuff like that, and you got to have grizzly bears and wolves too, you know, so it’s a balance is what you’re looking for, so that everybody can survive.

Josie Van Der Velden: Yeah. What are you, what are some of the things that you’re the most proud of that you’ve been able to accomplish or, or put into practice with? 

Leonard Ellis: Um, well I’m proud of the property, what we did to the property here. Taking it from a big stump ridden mud hole to a nice property, I’m proud of that. And proud of the kids, how they’re coming up behind me to follow in the footsteps. So much to be proud of, really, so, really quite lucky. 

Josie Van Der Velden: It feels like, um, you’ve put down some really solid roots here in the community and with your family and with the work and 

Leonard Ellis: Yeah, yeah, and I’m proud of that. It’s, it’s been many years of working with people and, and getting through things and stuff like that and But it’s so hard to find a good spot nowadays, you know, these spots are very special.

To find a good spot that it’s, you know, I looked for a long time for a piece of property in Bellico. You got to get something that’s out of the flood plain. You got to get something that’s got decent sunshine in the wintertime if you’re lucky, you know. There’s, and there’s so much room for other people expansion in the Caribou Chukotan too, you know, for setting up businesses.

And I don’t know why people, revolve around the city so much when there’s so much opportunity out in the countryside to, to live a nice, clean, sustainable life and closer to the earth sort of thing, you know.

Yeah, when I first bought the guide territory on the coast out there, there was hardly any grizzly bears in the, in the guide territory at all. I guess the previous outfitters had harvested pretty hard on them, you know. So I wrote letters to the Ministry of Environment saying that, you know, we’ve got perfect habitat out there with salmon spawning, creeks and sockeye creeks, which is, you know, some of the favorite food for grizzly bears, but we have no grizzly bears. So I ended up writing letters to, uh, the ministry and they ended up transplanting nine grizzly bears from the Kamano garbage dump down into my guide territory, and they were, they basically served as seed for, you know, for future grizzly bears that are still there today.

So that, that was a pretty cool thing when I got that letter that it was nine bears. Transplanted and now the clam two people are doing nice wildlife viewing, uh, operation up there. Spirit Bear Charters, I think it’s called, something like that. 

Josie Van Der Velden: Yeah, that’s a huge accomplishment. 

Leonard Ellis: Yeah. 

Josie Van Der Velden: Were there a lot of obstacles to overcome in order to get to that final letter of, 

Leonard Ellis: Yeah well they had to wait just for the right time. Thing to happen. They were changing, uh, they were going to make an incinerator instead of a garbage dump up there. So they had to tranquilize these bears to get ’em outta the dump. So they had to have somewhere to move ’em. So the, the timing was just right. They got the, my letters and then they had a, a place to move them to.

So they, I think, uh, the big outfit paid for the helicopter time to transport him. And, and, uh. Yeah, it was, it was a good thing. It’s good to harvest wildlife, and we’ve harvested wildlife all our life, but we always like to put back in, too, because you want, the main thing is you want the stocks to remain healthy.

You want the grizzly bear population to remain healthy. You want the, all the, all the fish and wildlife to remain healthy. Put a little bit of harvest on it, sometimes a little bit of culling, it makes it even healthier. It’s like weeding your garden. People want to save everything, it’s not necessarily the way to go, like, You, you save too much of one thing and then it eats everything else, you know, like if you save too many wolves and the poor caribou and the moose calves and the small deer, they can’t survive when the wolves eat them all.

That’s a real ongoing subject nowadays. 

Josie Van Der Velden: Mm hmm. Do you know how many grizzly bears there are now? 

Leonard Ellis: Oh, it’s hard to say. In the valley, population is up and down, but it depends a lot on the fish runs, Josie. The fish runs gotta be real healthy, and they’re not in the greatest of shape right now, you know, because their main food source in the fall time is, um, is salmon, eh?

Josie Van Der Velden: Mm hmm. 

Leonard Ellis: You know, they really depend on the salmon. 

Josie Van Der Velden: What would be your best guess right now? 

Leonard Ellis: Oh, in the valley, there’d be probably hundreds. Wow! In certain times of year, you know. Yeah. During the fall time when there’s salmon in the river or something like that. That might be a little high, but, but certainly a significant amount, you know.

Josie Van Der Velden: That’s impressive, from eight. 

Leonard Ellis: There’s other, uh, valleys around, like up in the Kemskut, there’s lots and lots of grizzly bears up there too, eh? 

Josie Van Der Velden: Yep. So, kind of what we were just saying about, you know, if, if you save too many of this animal, this one goes down, and, you know, sort of the need to balance. 

Leonard Ellis: Yeah. 

Josie Van Der Velden: I think we’re all aware that an untouched ecosystem can balance itself, but the reality is humans have not left really anything untouched anymore.

Leonard Ellis: No. 

Josie Van Der Velden: So there is this need for 

Leonard Ellis: Yeah. 

Josie Van Der Velden: Human, a human element in the management of land. What are your thoughts on our responsibility to manage the natural areas that we’re impacting with how we live and work and 

Leonard Ellis: Yeah. Well, you’re, you’re right on. I mean, humans are part of, most definitely part of the equation now.

You know, people say, Oh, just let nature look after itself. Well, that’s not true. Man has interfered with nature, you know, by, by removing habitat and changing habitat and stuff like that. So it’s really important. I think I, I look at North America and all the, and the fish and wildlife we’ve got in North America or even bc it’s like a big ranch, you know, and you gotta kind of manage your ranch, like weeding a garden, you know, you plant a garden and you plant all your desirable vegetables and, and you water it.

And then fertilize it. And if you, you know, they start to come up, well, if you don’t weed your garden and try to promote the vegetables that you want to grow, um, then the weeds will overtake, you know. So, it’s the same with wildlife management, you know, like, the predators now are out of hand, um, that’s a whole other story, but, um, the wolf population is running around killing dogs in Bella Coola Valley, you know, they’ve located a food source now because Um, there’s just too many, nobody’s thinning the wolves out anymore, like we used to do on the hunts, you know, we’d just thin them out, we wouldn’t kill them all, we’d just thin them out a little bit.

Like the wolf thing, it’s huge, it’s a huge topic here in my sale of the guide territory to the environmentalists, you know, and how, how I figured they were just going to save everything by not hunting it. In fact, they’ve let the wolf population explode and the wolf population has killed all the other wildlife now.

Like, it’s literally killed all the mountain goats on the central coast. You know, they’ve wiped them out. And in this terrain, they don’t come bouncing back. They don’t swim the inlets like a wolf does or a deer does. And it’s going to be a long, long time before they ever come back once they start addressing the wolf management issue, you know?

So, uh, It’s, uh, it’s a real issue. I sold the guide territory to them. I had, I had five. I started out with one guide territory and then I bought four more guide territories and amalgamated it into a 10, 000 square mile area of the central coast. So I had like the largest guide territory in B. C. Uh, with the highest grizzly bear quota, we had about 42 grizzly bears to harvest over the period of five years to spread out over 10, 000 square miles, which is not bad.

So, and the grizzly bear, the old boar grizzly bear, he kills the cubs and eats the cubs. I’ve got skulls and I can show you with the incisor marks from being killed by old boar grizzlies. To pluck the odd old boar grizzly out of the situation, what it does is it opens up feeding areas for the sows and the cubs, like on the flats and tidal estuaries and stuff like that.

Whereas if the old boar’s there, he’ll come out and kill, kill the cubs and fight with the sow and try, and the reason they do that is to try to bring the sow back into estrus, which means into heat so she’ll breed again, eh? And, uh, by plucking the odd old boar out, you actually improve the survival rate of the, of the cubs.

Because that old boar ain’t there to kill them anymore, and there’s lots of boars to service the sows, you know, so. So, uh, that’s, it is sustainable, what we’re doing. Like, we could still be doing it today. And the game populations would actually be in better shape than they are now, far better shape.

Because what’s happened now is the wolf population has exploded. It’s killed all the mountain goats, the moose, the deer. There’s just hardly, hardly any ungulates around now, uh, due to the wolf predation on it. And the wolves have run out of food in the mountains now, so they’re actually in the valleys, in the Bella Coola Valley, and they just have a circuit here where they kill, come and kill the dogs.

There’s been Many, many dogs killed in the Bella Coola Valley just over the last two or three years from wolves, eh? And they come right into your backyard, snatch them right off your So when you’re living on the land kind of thing, you know, there’s certain things that you just don’t want to happen. Like you don’t want to, how do you, we wouldn’t want to lose Bella or Kimber, you know.

Um, so you have to fight back a little bit, you know, and you got to hunt those wolves. And, and, um, this is where the balance comes in, you know, like, These environmental groups that are saving everything and taking donations from peoples in the city aren’t telling the whole story. They’re only telling enough of the story to generate donations to, to, for themselves.

And, uh, they aren’t telling people that the, there’s so many wolves killing, they never mention that there’s wolves who killed all the mountain goats on the central coast pretty much. Right. So, it’s, to me, that’s not right, you know. 

Josie Van Der Velden: Right. 

Leonard Ellis: So. 

Josie Van Der Velden: You know, you mentioned the, like the Indigenous culture and territories and the nations that are around here.

Do you, what role do you think, um, collaboration and education across the environmental groups, the Indigenous groups, as well as the, People with, that have held the, the guide titles in the area for decades, how that can play in creating a more, uh, realistic and, and truly sustainable land management plan.

Leonard Ellis: Oh, I, I, I believe it can, and that’s where these groups all have to get together because I do feel that everybody’s heart’s in the right place. It’s just lack of information, factual information and living on the land sort of thing that they might not be aware of, you know. So, um, certainly a collaboration with the First Nations and environmental groups.

We have no problem meeting with them. And, and, uh, guide outfitters who hold licenses, trappers who hold licenses. You know, these are all, old industries in the province that developed the province. You know, people are willing to pay big dollars to harvest the grizzly bear still, even though of all the negative publicity.

But, um, you know, that money could go directly back into restoring fish spawning creeks, you know, and, and habitat enhancement and, and training for youth, you know, and stuff like that. There’s so much that could be done, you know. Honestly, Josie, what’s happening now is, is The conservation officers are just killing these bears and selling them for the price of the hide, you know.

When a bear like that can be generating a hundred, two hundred thousand dollars at an auction in the States. And it’s serious money, like a sheep auction in the States. The sheep last year went for about three hundred and fifty thousand dollars U. S. dollars for a ten day sheep hunt. And a grizzly bear could be going for the same amount.

And that money could be used, uh, a good large percentage of it just Could be used for enhancement of the species in that. 

Josie Van Der Velden: Conservation of the environment and things. Really comes from having everyone at the table to be able to understand. 

Leonard Ellis: Exactly. 

Josie Van Der Velden: Do you, um, you know, tourism has a unique opportunity in that you’re often the first stop for a visitor who’s coming to the area when it comes to that education and understanding of the kind of complex management.

Leonard Ellis: Absolutely. 

Josie Van Der Velden: Um, do you feel there’s like a, a unique opportunity for operators in the region to really help, um, educate people when they come here? Yes. What’s happening? 

Leonard Ellis: And you’ll find that every guide has a different opinion on what he’s gonna, how he’s gonna educate them. You know, that, It’s a thing and there’s a whole lot of controversy here in the valley over that simple subject, you know.

But yeah, you’ve got them eating out of your hand when you’ve got them for eight hours a day, you know, out in the wilderness and in the bush and, and, you know, they ask you questions and you tell them what you feel or what you see or what you’ve experienced, you know. And, uh, it’s, and people listen, you know, because you’re there, you’re, you’re, you’re the one that is living it, you know.

It’s a really good way of, uh, Teaching them, um, what they need to know, you know, and it should, it should happen more so. 

Josie Van Der Velden: I think also, as the guides, you have the opportunity, not only to say, but to show through example, you know, by, by interacting with the environment in a certain way, or practicing and running your business in a certain way.

Yeah. Tourists. see firsthand, Oh, like this is how this is how it’s done around here. This is how this beautiful place is maintained and preserved. 

Leonard Ellis: Yeah. 

Josie Van Der Velden: Um, how do you think that businesses should be interacting with the environment around here? 

Leonard Ellis: Well, to run it as clean as possible, you know, I mean, we’re, we’re, we’re lucky in this location.

We have 110 volt, you know, from, from power from the road and we have city water. Everything else we do, we try to do with a very small footprint, you know, like, uh, very, very small. We, we heat with wood, you know, and, and, uh, we do the best we can. We were lucky we got a store down the road, so we’re not really living in the wilderness.

But, but it’s a nice, comfortable living and, and it doesn’t, you know, the air isn’t impacted too bad. Um, there’s diesel generators, of course, that generate our power and stuff like that. But, uh, we try to make as, as, as small of a footprint. Footprint as we possibly can in the especially in the environment, you know, 

Josie Van Der Velden: so you you’ve kind of touched on the fact that you’ve Pivoted the types of experiences that you’ve offered in your career Some that pivot you know, a lot of times those changes come from external factors that are out of your control, but it doesn’t change the reality that you need to make a change.

If what advice do you have for an operator who are feeling is feeling that pressure or that need to change to, to help them make that change? Transition. 

Leonard Ellis: Yeah. Well, you really gotta sit down and have a hard look at, at it sometimes. What, what you can, and you can’t do, you know, to, to make a living because you gotta, at the end of the day, you gotta pay your bills and make a living, you know, if, if you’ve got an investment in the tourism business.

So, and there’s restrictions, you know, like through BC parks and stuff like that, or, or you know, certain entities, you know, you have to be permitted to, to do stuff. And, uh. That’s where we’ve, you know, we, we, we phased out of the hunting because the environmental groups made it socially unacceptable to some people that we, that we guided hunters, you know, so that was a huge transition, a huge, huge transition for me after 25 years of building a, business on, on the guide outfitting and hunting to have to basically give it up and start over was huge.

It’s just like a kick in the guts, you know, and, and, uh, you, you lose your whole client base. You, you lose your name in the industry. It’s, uh, 25 years is a long time to try to build your name up, you know, and, and it’s not an easy, it’s a competitive industry. So to do a big transition and a big change into Bella Coola Grizzly Tours, I could see the writing on the wall and I was fortunate enough to register the name Bella Coola Grizzly Tours.

com and stuff like that in advance. I was smart enough to do that. But in the end, like it’s, it’s, after 25 years of doing it this way now, It’s working good. It’s working very good. I’m very pleased, uh, uh, because my family is working with me and, and, uh, and, and people like our product, you know. Um, but I still say that there’s room for both the hunting and the, and the, uh, And the ecotours in the province.

I think they just got to be divided into different watersheds. Like one big watershed could be, uh, for viewing and one big watershed could be for hunting. And two completely separate because you can’t, you can’t view a bear. One day for wildlife viewing where the photographers are doing their absolute best to get as close to that bear and in his face as they possibly can.

And then the next day you bring a guy with a 300 Magnum around the corner and gun him down. You know, it’s not fair to the animal. Uh, because he, you’re developing trust with the animal to photograph it. 

Josie Van Der Velden: You know, you, you mentioned that you saw the writing on the wall, so it’s like you being, just being aware of the industry and so you can understand if changes are coming and get ahead of them, was a big piece of your ability to sort of make that pivot.

Leonard Ellis: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You, you have to have a bit of vision and, and here in the wind what’s going on to Mm-Hmm to, to make decisions that are gonna work out for you financially in the long run. And that, that’s just good business management, you know, to see what. people, where it’s going, what people are doing, what, what, what works and, and, and what doesn’t work, you know, and you have to always be kind of one step ahead of the game sort of thing.

Um, uh, because over the period of time, things are going to change, you know, and, and, and, uh, as long as you’ve got your ear to the ground and, and try to be a step ahead of it, so you got to stay in the game. The key is to stay in the game, you know. 

Josie Van Der Velden: And also it sounds like an element of creativity, you know, just thinking like, okay, how in order to pivot, there’s creativity involved.

What’s the new model look like? How do we, how do we embrace this change and this environment and still be able to make something of it? 

Leonard Ellis: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. You got to figure out what, what’s popular. Like, you know, you see people trying yoga, yoga classes and stuff like that out there. But, uh, there’s different things.

And like I say, yeah. It’s funny how the human race evolves, and what their needs are, and what they want to do, and what’s popular, and I mean, who would have thought guys would be climbing, free climbing rock walls, or these tightrope walks across Hunland Falls, or climbing Hunland Falls with an ice pick. I mean, my God, you know.

Unbelievable guts, those guys. I couldn’t imagine, just some of the things that people are doing nowadays is beyond me, you know. There’s so many things, but you just have to try to stay ahead of it. Once you’ve got a land, I think the key, the real key is the land base, you know, getting a base for land. Like, you know, this land here that we’re sitting on here now is bought and paid for.

And, uh, And it just feels good. Uh, we can adjust the tours to however we need to adjust them, depending on what the people want. We’re, we’re, we’re in a beautiful setting, and, and, and it’s basically just about looking after people, you know, feeding them, and keeping them warm, and keeping them comfortable, and dry, and And she even teaches them how to light a fire, you know, kind of thing.

What, split and kindling and, and what kind of wood is this and what kind of wood is that. I never would have thought in the old days that I could just take people for a walk and give them a bottle of water and a granola bar and tell them, well, this is an alder tree and this is a birch tree and this is a fir tree and so less consumptive than it used to be.

In the old days. Thirty years ago, I, I was challenged to try to find the biggest grizzly bear in the world every week, you know, for, for a hunter. Or they’d catch the biggest spring salmon that I could possibly catch, you know. And, and that’s all changed now. People, people are a lot less demanding on what they want.

They, they just want to be out in the fresh air and, and get some exercise. And so it’s actually quite a bit easier now to, uh, accommodate them. 

Josie Van Der Velden: Well, it also sounds like you’ve managed to keep a pretty open mind through all of this, even now thinking of, well, maybe if we can combine these two, it’s like, that’s I think really key and something you should be very proud of.

Leonard Ellis: It’s not easy. No, no, you got to keep an open mind and, and, and, and I always fall back to the hunting and the hunting was a good thing. Like it was a really good thing and that’s what everybody did here before there was five outfitters working, guide outfitters working out of Bella Coola in the old days.

They all had clients coming in every spring and fall and summer and they would drop a lot of money in Bella Coola, you know. And what they did is they just looked for the old boars, grizzly bears. They never ever harvested cubs or sows, you know. But just take the odd old boar, grizzly bear out. And a lot of times the guys weren’t even, the hunters weren’t even successful, you know.

But they’d see one and they got away. They just had a great time being there and they’re booked again for next year. You know, um, so I, I see that as at least 50 percent of the opportunity that’s sitting on the central coast. It could still be going on, um, to do with the guide outfitting hunting that’s not being utilized at all anymore.

And, and the environment, honesty is actually suffering from it. The, the wildlife is actually suffering, uh, immensely because nobody is managing the predators out there now. And the wolf population has just gone crazy. There’s nothing wrong at all with the population of wolves in B. C. now. There’s too many wolves in B.C. right now. And they need to be thinned out a little bit. 

Josie Van Der Velden: Things will continue to change and evolve. 

Leonard Ellis: Yeah, you got to let some of the, you got to let some of the caribou survive. You got to let some of the moose survive. You got to let, you got to let some of the deer survive. The guys go hunting, now they can’t even find a moose or a deer.

You know, like, the, the, the area has become void of wildlife since. Since we sold the guide territory to the conservation group and they just throw their arms up in the air. Oh, I’ll let nature, nature take care of itself. Well, it’s taking care of itself because the predator cycle is so high now that it’s just wiping everything out.

And, uh, it’s, it’s not good for the young, the hooved animals, the ungulates, they’re all getting wiped out. And that’s our food source. People like us who live on the land, that’s our food source. And we need to be able to harvest a moose every year and a couple deer, you know? 

Josie Van Der Velden: Yeah, there’s a lot of layers to kind of every decision that’s made.

Leonard Ellis: Oh yeah. 

Josie Van Der Velden: On every level. Yeah. Um, when we look, when you think about the tourists that are coming here, um, what do you hope that they’re thinking about? They’re taking home with them. 

Leonard Ellis: Well, pleasant memories of a nice peaceful place and good memories of the outfitters that looked after them, you know, that we tried hard to find the wildlife for them and show them a lovely time.

Hopefully the weather was good for them and everything. We get a lot of nice compliments from people on TripAdvisor and how they enjoyed themselves and the crew. And accommodations and stuff like that, so that’s the most rewarding when they just, you know, it’s kind of simple stuff sort of thing and you make new friends, you know, and get a reputation and you get the opportunity to talk to them about just like what we’re stuff we’re talking about and, and, uh, Yeah, it’s a good experience.

It’s a real nice way to make a living, you know, it really is. It’s tough. Tourism industry, I’ve had so many more lean times than good times, you know, or prosperous times. It takes a lot, a lot of investment and a lot of time, um, to get a business going and established. And to hopefully have the right niche, you know, and the right location.

Location is so important, you know. You can’t go too far wrong in some spots, but yeah, there’s a, there’s a lot to it to try to pull it all together. 

Josie Van Der Velden: Sitting here in this location with you feels like you’ve got, you’ve struck the right chord. 

Leonard Ellis: Yeah, well, I, I stood right here and I looked at the view and I said, wow, pretty good.

Josie Van Der Velden: I thought that same thing when we rolled in. 

Leonard Ellis: Yeah. No, I thought this would be a great spot to have a fire and so this is what we built. 

Josie Van Der Velden: That’s awesome. Well, Leonard, that’s all the questions that we had. Is there anything that you wanted to say that we didn’t touch on or anything? 

Leonard Ellis: Not really. It’s been a real pleasure talking to you about the different subjects and you’re so well versed in the questions you ask.

I really, really appreciate it. I think it’s something that needs to get out. out there more, and I think what you’re doing is really going to be beneficial to people so they can understand both stories.

David Archer: This has been Travel Beyond presented by DestinationThink, and you just heard Josie Van Der Velden speaking with Leonard Ellis, the owner of Bella Coola Grizzly Tours. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For more resources and show notes, visit the blog at DestinationThink. com. This episode was produced and has theme music composed by me, David Archer, Sarah Raymond de Booy as my co producer, Lindsay Payne, Jamie Sterling, and Cory Price provided production support.

If you like what you hear, please take a moment to give us a 5 star rating on Apple Podcasts anywhere that you happen to be listening. It helps more people find us. Thanks again for listening and we’ll talk to you again soon.