…This year, B.C. saw a staggering amount — as much as a thousand pounds per day — of huckleberries commercially picked from the forests of the Kootenays, particularly the East Kootenays. This amount may not be a sustainable rate of harvest when thinking about the forest as an ecosystem that feeds itself. Arguably, berries in the forest are more valuable to the wildlife that live there than to us. Bears play an important role in the ecosystem and are intricately intertwined with many life processes. Though they are large, 85 per cent of a black bear’s diet is plant-based. Food is important to all animals but for bears, one season is critical to their survival.