Updated: May 01, 2009 3:52 PM

Twelve-year-old Kali Brauckmann has always had a heart for animals, whether furred, feathered or covered in scales.

As a youngster, the Crescent Park Elementary student would shelter creatures wounded by traffic or the family cat, nursing them back to health or, with the help of her parents, getting them the help they needed from a vet or rescue group.

As far back as she can remember, Kali has “definitely” wanted to be a veterinarian.

But right now, she has bigger things to do – save the province’s grizzly bears.

And the best way to do that, says Kali, is to put a halt to the trophy hunt that is decimating their numbers and threatening to throw a wrench into the circle of life they are so crucial to.

The quest, sparked during a trip with her dad last fall to the Great Bear Rainforest, has the support of well-known author Deepak Chopra. It caught the attention of print, radio and television media across the Lower Mainland after a full-page ad in a daily newspaper featured a letter to the premier on the issue, signed by Kali and Chopra, who is a family friend. [read her letter here]

As Kali continues to hope for a response to her plea from the premier, she’s moving full-steam ahead with her effort, reaching out now to those most shocked by the practice of hunting for fun: her peers.

“They’re against the trophy hunt,” Kali says, of how her classmates respond when she shares the news it is legal to hunt the bears.

“They’re kind of behind me.”

Kali spoke to students at Vancouver’s York House School last week, and is also presenting the issue to her schoolmates. She’s been invited to share her photos and information with members of Semiahmoo Trail Elementary’s Kindness Club. And, through Facebook, she’s asking others to add their voice to the call.

“She wants to educate kids on what is right in their own backyard,” said Kali’s mom, Deborah.

Kali’s dad, Patrick, said he didn’t know until the pair’s trip last fall that grizzlies could be hunted in the rainforest. The news was alarming, the investment banker and director of the Alliance for a New Humanity said.

“We decided to try to figure out a way together to stop that,” he said.

Kali knows the change won’t happen overnight. But she is determined it will happen.

“It might take a couple of years, but the grizzly bear hunt is going to be banned,” she said.