An orphaned bear cub will have a second chance at life after being caught snooping around a ritzy West Vancouver waterfront restaurant.
West Vancouver police and Conservation Officer Service members responded to the Beach House restaurant at the foot of 25th Avenue in Dundarave Wednesday morning when someone spotted the nine-month-old bruin around the dumpsters and grease traps.
Conservation Officer Simon Gravel said he believes the cub’s mother was the bear hit and killed on Highway 1 near the Westmount Road exit last month.
“It was determined that the cub was not food-conditioned. We did not have multiple reports of him trying to access non-natural food and he was showing fear of humans. … That’s a good sign for a bear,” he said. “But he was also not in good shape to spend the winter by himself.”
After knocking him out with a tranquilizer dart, Gravel brought the bear to a North Vancouver veterinarian who determined he was underweight but otherwise in healthy condition and thus would make a good candidate for rehabilitation at Critter Care Wildlife Society in Langley.
Too often, residents fail to report bears getting into mischief out of fear that conservation officers will come and shoot the bears.
But, Gravel said, that has the counterproductive effect of putting the bears at more risk because it allows them to become habituated.
“The bear was just hungry and looking for food so we cannot really blame him.
“That’s why we wanted to be proactive and remove him from this neighbourhood before he becomes habituated to that source of food, and becomes territorial in the area,” Gravel said.
“Then it becomes a problem. Those bears are not, anymore, candidates under our policy to be brought to a care facility.”
The bear will be trained to forage for food at Critter Care until it is ready for release in the spring. The not-for-profit society accepts donations to help cover the cost of feeding the bears in rehab.
