A hunt for bears Thursday near Parkside Drive in Port Moody ended in the killings of two adult black bears, including the mother of three cubs.
But that trio of young bruins will have another chance at life.
The mother black bear and its three cubs had been found going home-to-home on Heritage Mountain, dragging garbage out of people’s bins onto the green belts dividing the development, according to conservation officer Sgt. Todd Hunter.
When conservation officers arrived around 11 a.m. Thursday, they found another adult bear, unrelated to the family, that had also become habituated to humans.
Hunter said when other conservation officers arrived, they first tranquilized what they think was an adult male bear. But when, following their normal protocol, they went to run the other bears up trees, the family broke apart and scattered.
By 2 p.m, the officers had placed the one tranquilized cub in a bear trap so that the mother would come and try to collect them. The other two were still up a tree and the Hunter said officers were working to immobilize them with a dart gun.
As the afternoon wore on, conservation officers were eventually able to tranquilize the two other cubs and put them into the bear trap with the third. The sow, however, never came to collect them and officers were forced to destroy it in the woods to maintain public safety, said Insp. Murray Smith, who oversees to the Lower Mainland region for the BCCOS.
Looking back at the 25 reports the public called in regarding this family of bears, conservation officers determined that the three cubs would be good candidates for rehabilitation because they had been somewhat isolated from human conditioning, he said.
“The sow had been in three garages but the cubs were outside,” Smith said.
The orphaned cubs will spend the winter at Critter Care in Langley, one of three wildlife rehabilitation facilities in the province that can handle black bears. Next spring, they will be relocated in wilderness areas outside the Lower Mainland as yearling bears.
“They’re teenagers now. They’ll have to find their own way,” said Smith. “We want to give them their best chance to go back and be wild bears.”
The trouble with the bears on Heritage Mountain stemmed from garbage, something made more difficult when bins are put out on the street at regular intervals because bears will learn the pattern and show up between the time trash bins are put out and picked up.
“It's one of those things, again, where we need everybody to do their part,” Sgt. Hunter said. “I mean, this is intermittent green belt on top of a mountain. We’re up quite high. That comes with an added responsibility to ensure that you do everything that you can.”
Anecdotally, Hunter says the number of bear sighting calls has been quite a bit higher this July in the Tri-Cities.
“In the last five years since I’ve supervised, generally we see a lull at this time of year but we’re seeing a steady progression of conflicts,” he said.
