Another black bear is dead in North Vancouver after becoming badly habituated to human food and shot by conservation officers.
It’s the second one killed this season and we completely expect we’ll have to write this kind of story again at least once or twice more before the snow flies.
Why? Because either people aren’t getting the message about keeping their properties free of attractants, or they are and simply don’t care.
Conservation officers say they’ll be back in Blueridge soon with their ticket books, and rightly so. It’s not just the bears that are in danger. It’s also the bipeds.
Predictably, when we run these stories, our suburb-dwelling population gets angry at conservation officers, and throw around pejoratives like “bloodthirsty” and “killers,” which is totally unfair.
Relocation and rehabilitation are nice thoughts, but they are nowhere near as effective or humane as we like to tell ourselves. In fact, this bear was orphaned as a cub and taken to a rehabilitation shelter for a year before it sauntered back into a residential neighbourhood to eke out a living, courtesy of careless humans.
Instead of directing our anger at the COs, we might want to make sure our yards and garages are spotless of anything that may tempt the easily tempted bears. And further, we ought to start taking this up with our neighbours. It only takes one person ignoring the rules to ruin it fatally for a bear.
Every time we write a story about bear conflicts, we prominently push the message that it’s us who are responsible for these bears being shot.
It’s a message that, evidently, bears repeating.
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