Nicholas Read: Plight of bear in Coquitlam shows people care about black bears – Vancouver Sun

Opinion: For the conservation officers service to be effective, it has to demonstrate that it, too, really cares about bears and other wild animals
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There’s an animal advocacy organization in North Vancouver called The Fur-Bearers that prides itself on being a thorn in the side of the B.C. Conservation Officer Service.
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It makes sense. Black bears bear fur after all, and conservation officers kill a heck of a lot of black bears every year. Too many, say the Fur-Bearers.
As evidence, they cite figures gleaned from a recent Freedom of Information request that revealed that from 2016 to 2022, the number of bears killed by conservation officers exceeded the numbers reported to the public. The discrepancies range from seven bears in 2016 to 265 in 2019.
When the group asked the service to provide it with information about where in the province conservation officers killed 603 bears last year, it was only able to name locations for 247 of them. Where the remaining 356 were destroyed remains a secret.
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Asked to explain these gaps and inconsistencies, the service cited computer problems. Specifically, “duplication errors and issues related to moving to a new internal tracking system.” Maybe so, but surely those errors don’t date all the way back to 2016. They also don’t explain the absence of information about 356 missing bears.
The reason The Fur-Bearers is concerned about these incongruities is self-evident. There is something clearly wrong with a government agency that can’t provide reliable statistics about where and how many black bears it kills each year.
But there’s also a second reason. People care about black bears today; they didn’t when the service was established 119 years ago.
In 2024, such concerns as ecology, conservation and animal rights are part of public discourse, including — and perhaps most visibly — the welfare of B.C.’s black bears. Consequently, when a bear is killed today, the BCCOS has to justify the killing. The reason usually given is that the bear was identified as a “nuisance” or a “problem,” meaning it posed a potential danger to people in a particular area or community.
This month, much media attention was given to the plight of one such bear in Port Coquitlam. RCMP and the BCCOS said the injured bear was surrounded by a large crowd on Aug. 14, some of whom were feeding the bear watermelon. It was later reported that residents had been feeding the bear for three days.
The story presented an interesting dilemma. On one hand, residents were clearly wrong to have fed the bear, given that feeding wildlife habituates them to urban areas. But on the other, what they did spoke to their genuine compassion for the bear, especially as it was injured. They certainly didn’t want the bear harmed, even though what they did led to its death.
So what to do? The answer continues to lie in prevention. Yes, people have been told and told not to attract bears into their communities, but when a bear does appear, their reaction to it usually isn’t fear, but delight. Which is why it’s so important for the conservation officers service to build trust in those communities. Keeping accurate data on where and why bears are killed would be an obvious way to start.
Essentially, it’s a question of attitude. For the conservation officers service to be effective, it has to demonstrate that it really cares about bears and other wild animals. And so far it hasn’t. Nor has this government or any other.
True, what governments do matters more than what they say. But what they say matters, too. And so far, where animal welfare is concerned, officialdom has always been reticent. It’s why B.C. still has no endangered species legislation.
What happened in Port Coquitlam proves that in 2024, a great many voters do care. Which is why groups like The Fur-Bearers exist. Attitudes have changed. The writing is on the wall. If only someone in government would read it.
Nicholas Read is the author of a dozen books about animals and the environment and is a former Vancouver Sun reporter.
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