If the grizzly that attacked the BC school group is found, what happens next?
Efforts are underway to locate the bear that attacked a school group near Bella Coola, B.C., last Friday. What will happen after that is still under question.
Bear encounters are not rare, especially in Canada Sen. of British ColumbiaTraal coast. However, conservation experts CBC News spoke with say attacks like last week’s have involved larger groups.
But there is still discussion and debate about what might or should happen to the bears involved if they are found and definitely linked to the incident.
How do they find bears?
About 13,000 grizzlies live in BC, many of them in the Central Coast region.
nearby area 4 Mile Subdivision on traditional areas The population of bears in the Nuxalk Nation, where the attack took place last Friday, is thought to be very high – about 22 bears per 1,000 square kilometres, According to provincial calculations,
BC conservation teams track where bears are roaming, put out bait in places where they are expected to be, and set traps.
Once a bear is captured and stabilized, authorities work to match the animal with witness descriptions and evidence collected at the attack site – including tracks, hair, or anything the bear may have bitten.Yes incident.
“Even far awayR, the bears left some forensic evidence on the clothes of the victims,” KV saidAnn Van Dam, Inspector of the BC Conservation Officer Service (BCCOS). “From there… we’ll work in the lab to make sure we have the right bear.”
What could be the reason for the attack?
According to grizzly experts, as the size of a group of people increases, the likelihood of a bear attacking decreases.
Brian Falconer of BC Raincoast Conservation Foundation He says that to his knowledge, no bear has ever attacked a group of more than six people.
“It’s not rare,” he said of the Bella Coola attack, which involved at least 20 people. “it is unique.”
he says we We may never know what caused the bear to attack. He says bears have different personalities and comfort levels when it comes to personal space.
“It depends whether you’re protecting cubs or not. If you’ve just had a fight with another male to protect his cubs, you’re on hyper alert.”
Experts say authorities have not indicated whether anyone in the group that was attacked fled. Bear reaction may also increase.
According to a statement from BCCOS last Friday, “Several teachers physically intervened, using bear spray and bear bangers to scare away the bears.
“Thankfully, the teachers were prepared,” Van Damme said at a news briefing the same day. “He did everything he needed to do and he saved others from serious injury.”
Sergeant Jeff Tyer of the BC Conservation Officer Service says that, based on information received by officers, the attack on a school group in Bella Coola ‘possibly involved a boar and two cubs’. He said that no bear has been trapped yet.
What happens once grizzlies are found?
Van Damme says a nuA number of professionals, including the province’s wildlife veterinarian, large carnivore experts and wildlife biologists, will work together to determine next steps after the bear is found.
“The big part will be the bears’ evaluation,” he said in an interview with CBC’s Ian Hanumansingh on Monday.
Doing so would potentially determine “why this bear did something that we don’t see in bear behavior,” Van Damme said. “We won’t know any results until we complete more analysis.”
Faulkner also hopes to consult with the community where the students and teachers involved in the attack came from.
He says the Nuxalk Nation has co-existed with bears for thousands of years, and they may not think the best solution is to simply kill the attacking bear.
Three students and a teacher were hospitalized Thursday when a bear attacked a group of about 20 people in Bella Coola, about 420 kilometers northwest of Vancouver. Bella Coola Valley resident Tanis Monroe says she and other residents are fearful because of the dangers of grizzly bears.
Until the bear is definitively identified and the circumstances surrounding the attack become more clear, it is impossible to say whether the bear will be relocated or euthanized.
Often times, a bear is put down when hit, Faulkner says.
if it is a Mother with cubs Experts say the age of the cubs will also likely be part of the evaluation, and could influence the decision.
How does transfer work?
If the decision is to relocate the bear, it is done in two ways.
Lana Ciarniello, an independent conservation scientist and co-chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) human-bear conflict expert team, said translocations are often done to “buy time” so humans can remove anything that attracts bears to the area.
For example, if someone’s yard has things like trash, live chickens, or even fruit trees, it may attract bears. Capturing the animals and moving them about 10 to 20 kilometers away gives humans the opportunity to install bear-proof garbage cans or electric fences.
“We want to give the bear a chance and some time because this is a human problem that the bear is taking advantage of.”
The bear will likely come back, Ciaranniello says, but if it doesn’t find something to eat, it will likely move on.
Translocation refers to moving bears a considerable distance from the attack site, with the goal of preventing them from returning. This may mean moving bears hundreds or thousands of kilometers away, sometimes even across a mountain range.
But according to Ciarniello, it’s still not always a guarantee that the bear won’t return.
“There’s a male, a big male, who was taken from south-west BC years ago, decades ago, and they tracked his return. He was taken thousands of kilometers away – and he came back.”
Ciarniello calls that chariotInstead of relocating and relocating the bears, it would be better to “start addressing the root cause of all these conflicts.”
She says this means better management of non-natural foods and things Like garbage and unsafe chicken coops.
Is the attack related to the end of trophy hunting?
Since Friday’s attack, there have been Call to bring back BC’s grizzly bear trophy huntWho The provincial government ended in 2017.Only First Nations are allowed to kill grizzlies for food, social or ceremonial purposes in accordance with indigenous rights,
The BC Wildlife Federation, which advocates bringing back hunting, says WWithout this, “The number of problem grizzlies increases,
Faulkner disagrees and says that killing hundreds of bears because of the actions of one will not make anyone safe.
“Opening up trophy hunting and retaliating by killing 350 bears per year across the province is not the answer.”
Ciaranniello also noted that the bear involved in the recent attack may have been a female with cubs.
“Females with cubs were never allowed to hunt,” he said. “Then these bears would not have been removed from the population.”
When asked Monday if the government was considering bringing back trophy hunts, BC Environment Minister Tamara Davidson said that even when hunting was open, it typically did not happen in areas where attacks were occurring.
“So this cannot be a solution,” she said. “The solution right now is to locate the bear.”
