Cub’s tragic killing will change how community handles its bear population
Kate Webb, The Province
Published: Sunday, July 29, 2007

The town of Ocean Falls, angry over the shooting of a young orphaned black bear residents had adopted, is facing a grim reality: Their generosity may have played a role in his death.

The year-old cub — which town administrator Peter Offermann had affectionately branded the village “clown” — was snared and shot by provincial conservation officers a week ago after a complaint from a storeowner that a bear had damaged his building.

Residents attempted to prevent the shooting, arguing that the cub had never been a problem bear, but got nowhere.
The residents of Ocean Falls came to expect visits from the two black bear cubs who had lost their mother. They didn’t realize the saga would turn ugly.
The residents of Ocean Falls came to expect visits from the two black bear cubs who had lost their mother. They didn’t realize the saga would turn ugly.

Offermann is no stranger to the problem posed by bears in the town. Two or three times a day, he says, he comes face to face with a black bear scavenging for food or nosing through one of the town’s thick patches of berry bushes.

The interactions are usually friendly, because food is plentiful and local bears are accustomed to seeing humans.

But sometimes the food has been left out by tourists or residents, who all make a habit of feeding the bears.

According to an employee, one store owner — ironically, the one whose complaint led to the shooting — routinely leaves rotting produce in the alley behind the shop.

When officers arrived to deal with the cub last Sunday, residents confronted them, insisting the bear, who has a twin, had never been a “problem” bear and did not need to be shot.

The officers disagreed.

“They basically said that as far as they were concerned, any bear that was in their snare was a problem bear — and they intended to shoot all problem bears,” said Offermann (whose full story appears in Sunday’s Unwind section).

“They said it was our fault because we had habituated it to our garbage,” he added.

The standoff is just the latest example of an ongoing debate about how best to deal with problem bears in the province.

Over the past 20 years, 13 people have lost their lives to bear attacks in B.C. Another 122 have been hurt.

There were 16,701 bear complaints in B.C. in 2006-07, a 15-year high. That was followed closely by 2004-05, when there were 16,432 complaints. In the 12 years prior to 2004, complaints peaked at 11,978 in 1998-99.

In the Ocean Falls incident, the store owner was upset because a bear had ripped off some window coverings and a sign at his business, Offermann said.

Although the slain cub was not the same bear, Offermann admitted one of the cubs had come into his house one day looking for cat food. He also reported the twin cubs were often spotted lying on people’s lawns and porches, even being fed.

According to one of B.C.’s most respected bear-cub rehabilitators, rather than bicker over what to do with problem bears, people should focus on preventing bears’ socialization to humans in the first place.

Angelika Langen, owner and operator of the Northern Lights Wildlife Society in Smithers, sides with the conservation officers in the Ocean Falls case.

Given the cubs’ history, it was inevitable they would have posed a threat to the community, she says.

Langen and her husband have rehabilitated 102 cubs in the past 17 years and are expert at determining which cubs can be safely cared for and released — and which have irreparably come to associate humans with food.

“Once [cubs] are a year old, they’re habituated,” said Langen, who says rehabilitation is only an option for very young cubs because they can still be conditioned to fear humans. Older bears cannot.

“[The Ocean Falls case] is an accident waiting to happen,” Langen said. “Eventually that bear would have said, This is my home, get out of here.’ It would have become territorial . . . and then somebody might have got hurt.”

She called the angry local reaction to conservation officers “unfair,” arguing the problem really lies with people who leave things like garbage, compost and birdseed out where bears can find them.

“If you leave your bird food and your dog food lying out, they’re going to eat it,” she said. “They get in 10 or 15 minutes as much protein as they would find in a whole day scavenging in the wild.

“If people don’t take responsibility to make it unattractive for bears to come close to human dwellings, then the government really doesn’t have a choice [but to kill them].”

Tony Hamilton, large-carnivore specialist for the Ministry of Environment, said the conservation-officer service doesn’t have a firm rule for dealing with “conflict” bears because every situation is different.

In most cases, relocation is ineffective because bears will try to find their way back, or go in search of other similar communities, he said.

“My understanding is that officer discretion always overrides normal policy — and it has to, because human safety is involved,” he said.

The conservation officers involved could not be reached for comment.

Hot spots for bear-human conflicts are Prince George, Whistler, the North Shore and Lower Mainland, Kamloops and Nelson.

This past season alone, 690 black bears and 33 grizzlies were killed by B.C. conservation officers.

Some cities have taken steps to reduce the need for fatal force.

In the mid-1990s, Revelstoke formed the Revelstoke Bear Management Committee, whose first task was hiring a bear manager to develop and implement a community-based education program, with the objective of eliminating bear attractants in the community.

Whistler followed suit in 1997 with the formation of the Black Bear Task Team, implementing a bylaw requiring residents and tourists to drop off all garbage and recycling at one of two “bear-proof” depots.

Offermann said the death of the Ocean Falls cub has motivated him to take similar measures.

“I’ve already informed the Ministry of Environment we’re going to change our method of garbage collection,” he said. “The town is purchasing bear-proof garbage containers with steel lids, which will be installed at three locations in town.”

He’s also encouraging residents to eliminate food and other attractants  and plans to put up signs warning tourists not to feed the bears.

© The Vancouver Province 2007
Sound Off!

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    * Killing is NEVER the answer. Anyone that says that is a kill…Lance
    * This is a shame. The officers are from out of the community …Donna
    * Conservation officers are probably acting on their own, unle…Rudy Hiebert