This week one of the local conservation officers stopped in, letting me know he has euthanized a second bear this season.
He was obviously distraught over what had just happened, and asked me if I wanted to go with him on a ride along to dispose of the bear.
I was already getting mad. Not at him, but at the residents who put this bear’s life at risk. I declined that part of the ride along, but went with him to go knock on some doors where the incident occurred.
The conservation officer I was speaking to said he likes to give people the benefit of the doubt, but he doesn’t think the people in town truly know the consequences of their actions.
The incident occurred at a house that has a bear proof garbage bin, but one of the locks was unfortunately faulty.
The CO could tell when he went to intercept the bear that is was displaying behaviours that meant it had been accessing people’s garbage for a while.
When he approached the bear, it backed away a bit, and when the CO backed up, the bear went right back to its food source.
Eventually, it ran up a tree down the street, and the CO had to kill the bear.
A young girl and her mother were outside, and the girl saw the whole thing. The CO thanked her and her family for doing their part in keeping bears safe.
The conservation authority’s mandate is to protect people who live in residential areas, and that includes destroying wildlife when they become habituated to humans.
The only way we can prevent this from happening is to ensure we keep our garbage locked away safely. This can mean properly using the bear proof garbage bins if we have them, reporting faulty bins to the Town of Golden, keeping our bins stored away in sheds or garages so they aren’t easily accessible, and not putting our garbage out on the street before the morning of pickup.
Hopefully we can all work together, and realize the severity of this issue. Because of our actions, an innocent bear lost its life.
As nice as it would be to say that we shouldn’t be killing the bears in town, it would be impossible to keep people and children safe. This bear was in close proximity to an elementary school, and the conservation officer had to do his job.
There is no ceremonious death for these bears. They are shot, and then the body is dumped outside of town. The only memory of this bear lives on with the conservation officer, who then needs to clean its blood from his hands, and the back of his truck.
