A bear and her two cubs were killed by conservation officers in downtown Squamish on Sunday after causing an “extensive amount” of property damage and continuously eating garbage.
The mother black bear had been tagged and relocated before, but this time she returned with her cubs and was teaching them how to find food in garbage bins downtown.
“We tried to haze them away. We even blocked an entire road so they could get away. We put in a lot of effort, but they were above the threshold of tolerance,” Cst. Simon Gravel of the B.C. Conservation Officer Service said of the bears that had become used to eating garbage and being around people. Unfortunately, unlike some other young bears, he added these cubs couldn’t have been rehabilitated because they learned the behaviour from their mom.
“It’s really important that people lock their garbage and, if possible, store it in their garage,” said Gravel. In Squamish, some bears are spending the time to open locked bins because they’ve been rewarded with garbage before.
On June 6, a “highly habituated” two-year-old bear was killed in Britannia Beach after becoming indifferent to people, eating garbage and breaking into a chicken coup and killing the birds inside.
