Sunshine Coast conservation officers had to destroy two bears in the last week of September, both of them dangerously close to populated town centres.
One large male black bear – described as cinnamon coloured – was killed on Sept. 26 near downtown Sechelt where it was trying to gain access to residents’ houses.
“We probably received close to 20 reports on this bear, and that doesn’t even come close to the number of people that were in conflict with this animal,” conservation officer Dean Miller said.
This bear – which was also spotted in West Sechelt – was reported to have been acting sickly and abnormal. The person who called it in said the bear was very lethargic and wouldn’t leave their yard and that it was drooling quite a bit.
“We’ve had a few cases where people have purposefully poisoned bears because they do not want to change their behaviours and keep their attractants and garbage and whatnot inside their homes,” Miller said.
The bear was first reported in the Davis Bay/Selma Park area where it was going through people’s yards and attempting to enter their houses.
“What tends to happen is that if bears are not harassed out of an area they will increase their level of habituation,” Miller said. “Someone posted a video of it pushing against a sliding glass door while they were right on the other side of the door.”
In a separate incident, a female bear – a sow – attacked a Powell River man on Sept. 24 when he was walking his dog at 5:30 a.m. According the report, neither the man nor the dog did anything to provoke the bear.
“It knocked him down to the ground and he didn’t even now that this bear was a female and had cubs,” Miller said. “He didn’t even see the bear until it was a few feet from him.”
The man pushed the dog away from him while the bear continued to attack him.
“The majority of the attack happened after the dog ran away from the incident,” Miller said. “There’s a lot of misinformation going on – on social media – that this dog provoked the attack, but that’s absolutely not true.”
Miller said that this bear also had a history with the conservation office.
“This bear was killing bunnies and chickens. It was in the Powell River district for a long time,” Miller said.
The man was taken to the hospital. Conservation officers pursued the offending animal and destroyed it as well as its cubs.
“The thing that people should be asking themselves before they even see a bear in their yard is, why would a bear be in my yard?” Miller said. “The community really has to stop giving bears reasons for being in their yards. It’s as simple as picking fruit early before it ripens and ripening the fruit inside.”
Miller also warned people to be vigilant about their garbage, especially in the late summer and fall.
“This is a human problem, this isn’t the bears,” Miller said. “This is kind of an unusual year because we’ve had such a hot, dry summer and spring that their natural food sources burned off quite quickly. These bears are desperate for calories, so they’re doing things that bears don’t normally do – coming into communities and trying to make a living for themselves.”
Typically conservation officers on the Sunshine Coast receive about 900 phone calls about bears each year. Miller said that they only have to destroy about four to eight bears in the average year.
Sunshine Coaster Mary Pfister said she has seen more bears than normal going through her yard this year.
“I’m concerned that there are so many bears around here,” Pfister said. “One concern is that there are not warning signs up to tell people that there are lots of bears around. Also that they are starving.”
Pfister said she saw a young cub wandering around on its own recently.
“The situation is getting very problematic,” Pfister said. “I think something should be done about it.”
