Four bears 鈥� a mother and three cubs 鈥� were destroyed last Saturday morning following a frightening incident in a Princeton residential neighbourhood.
A conservation officer, who had set a trap for a bear that was reported after it tried to break into a shed, was surprised to realize an entire family was involved.
At least one cub entered the trap, putting the CO between the captured cub and the sow, and shots were fired.
All four bears were put down.
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That鈥檚 got to be a wrenching experience for someone who is trained and educated to protect wildlife, as well as enforce the law.
Considerable outrage erupted on social media after a story about the incident appeared online.
That conservation officer did not kill those bears. We did.
The bears died because they had become habituated to non-natural food sources. That is simply down to the people who leave out their garbage, don鈥檛 tidy up after their fruit trees, and place attractants like bird seed in their backyards.
It would be lovely in a storybook-sort-of-way to think that bears who are urbanized can be happily relocated to a green, leafy place in the forest.
Only that doesn鈥檛 work.
Bears dependent on human food fail in the wilderness. Even if they are dropped hundreds of miles away, they will return to their urban territory.
The idea persists that bears don鈥檛 hurt anyone. That鈥檚 probably because they are fuzzy and adorable looking.
The facts are that at least 17 people have been killed by bears in the province in the last 24 years and more than 200 were injured. Bears are wild animals. They need, and deserve, to live in the wild.
Yeah, yeah, they were here first. But we are here now and we don鈥檛 want to move.
Therefore social distancing is required.
Again, a CO didn鈥檛 kill that family of bears on the weekend. We did.
Let鈥檚 try to do better with our own behaviour, to make sure it doesn鈥檛 happen again.
鈥� Black Press
