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B.C. wants to protect grizzlies. But after two cubs were shot, critics say its approach is failing

For most of their lives, the two grizzly cubs killed near Pemberton, B.C. earlier this month lived in a more rural area north of the community. Photo by Coast to Cascades Grizzly Bear Initiative

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The recent shooting death of two grizzly cubs who spent the summer roaming the farm fields and forests of a rural valley, about 150 kilometres north of Vancouver, B.C., has exposed "huge gaps" in the province's efforts to help bears and humans co-exist, conservationists say. 

The two cubs, a male and a female, were orphaned in June after their mother disappeared, and was potentially killed. They spent most of the summer near where they were born in Pemberton Meadows. The long mountain valley has long been grizzly territory, and was a safe haven for the cubs. 

But in mid-October, they started moving through the valley, wandering into Pemberton and the neighboring communities of Mt. Currie and the Lil'wat First Nation. A few days before Halloween, they killed some free-range chickens. That set off alarm bells: conservationists warned that having discovered that rummaging near humans could lead them to easy food, the bear cubs would habituate to humans, putting both at risk unless the government acted quickly to tag and relocate them.

Days later, in early November, the cubs were killed on the Lil'wat First Nation reserve. In a statement posted to its Facebook page, the nation, which had been working with conservationists to protect the bears, said that "due to personal safety, the bears have both been killed. A ceremony and tobacco offering were made, and the bears have been buried." 

(Erica Van Loon, communications director for the Coast to Cascades Grizzly Bear Initiative, stressed that "it was just as likely" the cubs could have been killed off-reserve — a response to a slew of racist comments posted on local Facebook pages after the cubs were killed. "That was one person's decision — not the community's," she said.) 

The Pemberton region sits at the intersection of four grizzly populations. Two of those groups are considered critically endangered, while a third is listed as being of “high conservation concern” by the province. While B.C.'s ban on grizzly hunting and efforts to protect key habitats are helping populations recover, critics want the province to do more to help bears and humans co-exist peacefully.

"We don't have recovery plans, so we're expecting these people just to live with this large carnivore and not have fear in it — that's not very rational," said Lana Ciarniello, an independent bear biologist who is leading a project with the environmental group Coast to Cascade Grizzly Bear Initiative. 

Without a recovery plan, Ciarniello expects the problem will only get worse as both bear populations and the human communities scattered throughout their territory continue to grow, increasing the odds of problematic encounters. Bears and people can  live safely in close proximity, given the right measures, she added. 

But to achieve that co-existence the province must bolster its enforcement efforts to ensure people don't draw bears to their homes with trash or other attractants. It also needs to create a dedicated team of bear experts who can quickly respond to keep curious or hungry bears away from humans, she said. 

"There are no time-sensitive protocols in place for situations like this," said Sonia Nicholl, an expert in bear-human conflict management who worked with Ciarnello to try to protect the two grizzly cubs and keep them out of human territory. "These were managed bears. They were not, in our eyes, public safety threats. These were bears that needed to be managed by the entity that manages endangered species." 

Nicholl believes the cubs' demise could likely have been prevented if the provincial Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship and the Ministry of Environment, which are jointly responsible for bear conservation, had issued emergency collaring and a live trap so the group could relocate them.

The group typically tries to avoid relocation, which can simply result in another, less human-accustomed bear replacing the relocated ones, but in this case, the group considered it necessary to prevent the situation from escalating. Ensuring the female cub's safety was particularly important, she said, because the region's grizzly populations are so threatened, she said. 

As the situation escalated, she said the group warned officials the cubs "could be dead in three days" in a late-week meeting, but didn't receive the necessary equipment to move them. By the following Monday, the cubs had been killed. 

"The answer we got was that [they] didn't realize it was so urgent," she said. 

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment said that "​​the issue of human-wildlife conflict is complex and cannot be solved by the Conservation Officer Service (COS) alone. Across BC, the COS takes extensive action to minimize the risks that conflicts with wildlife pose to public safety and property." 

In September, the province announced that it will start working with the Grizzly Bear Foundation to reduce conflicts between humans and bears. Through the program, the province "will work with First Nations guardians, independent scientists, and animal welfare and conservation experts, to provide recommendations to potentially improve all aspects of conflict between people and wildlife." 

Other jurisdictions where grizzlies and humans co-exist, like Alberta and Montana, have successfully created or supported programs that help the two co-exist in real time. B.C. needs similar programs, both Nichols and Ciarniello said. 

"We're falling down on it in a big way," said Ciarniello. "To kill something just to get rid of it — that can't be the way we manage grizzlies, and it's certainly not how they're going to be recovered."

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