Efforts are underway to locate the bear that attacked a school group near Bella Coola, BC, last Friday. What happens after that is still in doubt.
Bear encounters are not uncommon in Canada, especially in Central British ColumbiaCentral Coast. However, attacks like last week’s involving large groups are, according to conservation experts CBC News spoke to.
But there is still discussion and debate about what could or should happen to the bears involved if they are found and definitively linked to the incident.
How do they find the bear?
There are about 13,000 grizzly bears living in British Columbia, many of them in the Central Coast region.
The nearby area 4 mile subdivision in traditional territories The Nuxalk Nation, where last Friday’s attack occurred, has what is considered a fairly high bear population: about 22 bears per 1,000 square kilometers, according to provincial counts.
BC conservation teams track where bears move, place bait where they expect them to be, and set traps.
Once a bear has been captured and restrained, officers work to match the animal to witness accounts and evidence collected at the scene of the attack, including footprints, fur or anything the bear chewed during the attack.g the incident.
“Even furtherr, the bears left some forensic evidence on the victims’ clothing,” said Kevin Van Damme, inspector of the British Columbia Conservation Officer Service (BCCOS). “From there… we’ll do lab analysis to make sure we have the right bear.”
What could have caused the attack?
According to grizzly bear experts, as the size of a group of people increases, a bear is less likely to attack.
Brian Falconer of B.C. Rainy Coast Conservation Foundation He says that, to his knowledge, there has never been a grizzly bear attack on a group of more than six people.
“This is not unusual,” he said of the attack on Bella Coola in which at least 20 people participated. “This is unique.”
he says we What caused the bear attack may never be known. He says bears have different personalities and comfort levels in terms of personal space.
“It depends on whether you’re protecting the cubs. If you’ve just had a battle with another male to protect your cubs, you’re on high alert.”
Authorities have not indicated whether anyone in the group that was attacked fled, which experts say. It could also intensify a bear’s reaction.
According to a BCCOS statement last Friday, ““Several teachers intervened physically, using bear spray and a bear striker, to scare the bear away.”
“Fortunately, the teachers were prepared,” Van Damme said at a news conference the same day. “They did everything they had to do and prevented serious injuries to other people.”
Sergeant. Jeff Tire of the British Columbia Conservation Officer Service says that based on information received by officials, “there was probably a sow and two cubs involved” in the attack on a school group in Bella Coola. So far no bears have been trapped, he added.
What happens once grizzly bears are found?
Van Damme says noA group of professionals will work together to determine next steps after the bears are found, including the province’s wildlife veterinarian, large carnivore specialist and wildlife biologist.
“The most important part will be the assessment of the bear,” he said Monday in an interview with CBC’s Ian Hanomansing.
Doing that will potentially determine “why this bear did something that we just don’t see in bear behavior,” Van Damme said. “We won’t know any results until we complete more analysis.”
Falconer hopes the community where the students and teachers in the attack were from will also be consulted.
The Nuxalk nation has coexisted with bears for thousands of years, he says, and may not feel the best solution is to simply kill the offending bear.
Three students and a teacher were hospitalized Thursday when a bear attacked a group of about 20 people in Bella Coola, a community about 420 kilometers northwest of Vancouver. Bella Coola Valley resident Tanyss Munro says she and other residents are afraid because of the dangers posed by grizzly bears.
Until the bear is definitively identified and the circumstances surrounding the attack become clearer, it is impossible to say whether the bears will be relocated or euthanized.
Falconer says most of the time, when there have been injuries, the bear is euthanized.
if it is a mother with puppies, experts say the age of the puppies will likely also be part of the evaluation and could influence the decision.
How does relocation work?
If the decision is to move the bear, there are two ways to do it.
The relocation is most often done to “buy time” so humans can remove anything that attracts bears to the area, said Lana Ciarniello, an independent conservation scientist and co-chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) human-bear conflict expert team.
For example, if someone has things like trash, live chickens, or even fruit trees in their yard, it could attract bears. Capturing the animals and moving them 10 to 20 kilometers away gives humans the opportunity to install bear-proof garbage containers or electric fences.
“We want to give the bear a chance and some time because this is a human problem that the bear is taking advantage of.”
The bear will likely return, Ciarniello says, but if it doesn’t find anything to eat, it will most likely move on.
Translocation refers to moving bears a long distance from the site of the attack, with the goal that it does not return. That can mean moving a bear hundreds or even thousands of miles away, sometimes even across a mountain range.
But according to Ciarniello, that’s not always a guarantee that the bear won’t come back.
“There’s a male, a big male, that was moved from southwestern British Columbia years ago, decades ago, and they tracked his return. They moved him like thousands of kilometers, and he came back.”
Ciarniello says that rathRather than relocating and moving bears, it would be better to “start addressing the root cause of all these conflicts.”
She says that means better management of food and unnatural things. such as garbage and unsafe chicken coops.
Is the attack related to the end of trophy hunting?
Since Friday’s attack, there have been Calls to restore grizzly bear trophy hunting in British Columbiawhich the provincial government ended in 2017. Only First Nations may kill grizzly bears in accordance with Indigenous rights, for food, social or ceremonial purposes.
The BC Wildlife Federation, which advocates for restoring hunting, says wwithout that, “The number of problem brown bears increases.”
Falconer disagrees and says killing hundreds of bears because of the actions of one won’t make anyone safer.
“Opening up trophy hunting and killing 350 bears a year across the province in retaliation for that is not an answer.”
Ciarniello also notes that the bear involved in the recent attack could turn out to be a female with cubs.
“The females with cubs were never allowed to be hunted,” he said. “So these bears would not have been removed from the population.”
Asked Monday whether the government is considering reinstating trophy hunting, British Columbia Environment Minister Tamara Davidson said that even when hunting was open, it typically did not take place in areas where attacks occurred.
“So this might not be a solution,” he said. “The solution now is to locate the bear.”
