Conservation officers did not shoot the wrong bear on Aug. 20, as has been circulating in Squamish recently.
Officers euthanized a bear that day after a woman was attacked at Coho Park on Aug. 19.
This past weekend, after the Coho Park Trail was again closed due to aggressive bear behaviour, the widely circulated rumour around town was that conservation officers had initially shot the wrong bear.
"Absolutely not," says Sgt. Dean Miller of the Conservation Officer Service.
There were new reports of other bears following people in the park, and when officers patrolled this past weekend, two bears displayed very human-habituated behaviour, approaching the officers "several times,” according to Miller.
Both of these bears were ultimately destroyed.
One additional bear was caught in a trap and released, as it was not a bear that had been seen to be aggressive.
Miller says that he strongly suspects someone is purposefully feeding bears in Coho Park.
"The hypothesis from the officers ... at times when bears show a lack of fear of people, there must be a food source. And with this behaviour being so extreme ... we suspect that it's a possibility that somebody may be feeding these bears."
He said he could see one bear behaving aggressively, as reported on Aug. 19; however, to have three suggests something’s going on to habituate these animals, he tells The Squamish Chief.
"I think where there's smoke, there's fire in this kind of situation,” he said.
Miller noted that once a bear is food-conditioned, they are known to return to the same source.
He has heard of a bear returning to the same place one year later on the exact day it last accessed food there.
Miller said contrary to what some folks might believe, officers find it heartbreaking to kill bears.
"In the south coast here, we try very hard to give conflict bears a chance.”
Among other things, he said the officers will first try using hazing tactics on a conflict bear, and officers are often out doing education of the public to keep bears safe.
"The public needs to understand that it's fine to have a bear walk through your property on occasion. But it's not the preferred thing. We don't want to unwild bears with unnatural food sources; we want them to behave predictably in the normal fashion around people — to show fear."
Some folks may feed them because they believe the bears are starving, but he said that is an uneducated belief.
"I'm hoping somebody from the public does divulge some information that we can work with in an enforcement sense. This is just — it's heartbreaking for us to do some very good public education work in a community like Squamish, and then all it takes is one person with the wrong idea, and they can literally habituate four, five, 10 bears in a small geographic area."
If you have information on this or any human-wildlife conflict, call 1-877-952-7277 (RAPP) or #7277 on the Telus Mobility Network. If the situation is not an emergency, report the incident online or contact the nearest Conservation Officer Service district office.
