A male grizzly bear weighing “north of 700 pounds” was caught in West Sechelt and relocated by the Conservation Officer Service (COS) on Thursday, Sept. 29.
Sgt. Dean Miller of the COS said he was surprised that morning to find the bear caught in one of the snare traps he’d set up, because there hadn’t been any sightings of the animal for several days.
“I was actually considering at that point removing all the traps because we had not had a fresh, confirmed, legitimate sighting since Monday morning when we originally responded,” Miller said.
“Typically if the community doesn’t see a bear as exceptional as this one, you go under the assumption that it’s possibly moved on.”
But when Miller drove up to the area of the traps at the top of Norwest Bay Road on Sept. 29 at about 9:30 a.m., a large and angry grizzly charged at Miller’s truck from behind the tree line.
The bear was attached by the leg to a snare on a three-metre-long cable – so Miller was safe, but rattled.
“It was a very large object with teeth and claws,” Miller said.
Knowing he needed backup, Miller called fellow COS member Murray Smith for assistance and four Sunshine Coast RCMP officers also responded to help keep the area clear.
After about a half an hour, Miller said he and Smith had a plan of attack, shooting two darts with “immobilization drugs” into the animal before it fell asleep.
Once the bear was asleep, the COS assessed it to determine if it would be a good candidate for relocation. At somewhere between 15 to 18 years old with no record of human conflict or food conditioning, it was decided the bear was a good fit.
“I think this bear made quite a bit of effort to avoid people, especially because it wasn’t seen in the four days from the first sighting and the time that we trapped it,” Miller noted.
Officers had to devise a way to transport the bear, so they attached a strap to the bear’s back legs, threaded the strap through the live trap, and hooked it up to the winch on the back of the COS truck.
“There were actual moments where my winch was struggling,” Miller said, noting a week earlier he had pulled fridges and washing machines out of the forest with the same winch without any issues.
He surmised the bear must have weighed “north of 700 pounds” because a weigh scale with the bear inside the live trap read 2,400 pounds, and just over 1,600 pounds without the grizzly.
The trap with grizzly inside had to be weighed before pilots could confirm their ability to haul it.
Miller said Airspan Helicopters came to the rescue as soon as the company heard about the need to transport the grizzly, dropping everything to find a solution that could work that day. It was important to get the grizzly relocated as quickly as possible, Miller said, to avoid having to redrug the animal.
He wouldn’t say where the grizzly was taken but said the helicopter ride was 45 minutes to an hour in duration.
“The likelihood of him returning is minimal,” Miller said.
He’s unsure where the bear came from but the COS tagged the bear’s ear to identify it in the future and took a sample of fur that biologists can test against other fur samples taken in various areas of B.C.
“There’s a large developing database of grizzly bear DNA,” Miller said.
“It may take a year before we actually get the results from the hair from this bear, but we’re hoping to link it with this population of grizzly bears that’s west of the Lillooet River.”
The first confirmed grizzly sighting on the Sunshine Coast was Aug. 19 in Egmont. That young male grizzly was shot by a property owner protecting his livestock.
The relocated adult male grizzly was originally spotted eating apples in a yard in West Sechelt and was filmed doing so on Sunday, Sept. 25. By Monday the COS was involved, actively trying to capture the animal and relocate it.
