From the CBC:
Autopsy results have confirmed that a bear attack killed a well-known elder in the Xaxli’p First Nation whose remains were found last week near Lillooet, B.C.
After Bernice Evelyn Adolph had been reported missing, police dogs found her remains on Thursday near her remote property about 175 kilometres northeast of Vancouver.
There was evidence that Adolph, 72, had been partially consumed by bears, but before the autopsy, police were not sure how she died.
“After reviewing the autopsy results, evidence from the scene, and expertise and information provided by conservation officers, the B.C. Coroners Service was able to confirm a bear attack as the cause of her death,” spokesman Mark Coleman said in a release on Tuesday.
Coleman said no decision about an inquest had been made.
Conservation officers killed four bears Sunday that matched the description of the animal that had fed on the woman.
Samples from the bears were sent to Edmonton for DNA testing to determine which bears were involved in the attack.
Adolph had complained to conservation authorities about bears on her property.
Investigators found evidence that bears had tried to enter her house.
While contact between black bears and humans is common, even in Metro Vancouver, the animals tend to fear humans and fatal attacks are rare.
Two people have died in black bear attacks in B.C. since 2000.
American black bears are generally not dangerous. Normally, if you see one, it is its black behind charging into the undergrowth or up a tree.
I wonder if these bears had been fed and learned to enter homes . That is normally what causes a black bear to lose its fear of man and possibly attack.
In some part of Canada and the US, bears are baited in to be shot. This is illegal in British Columbia, so it is unlikely that the bear learned to associate people with food from hunters.
However, there are bears, mostly large males, that develop really solid predation skills. They eat a lot of moose calves during the spring, and it is not a large leap from taking moose calves to attacking people.
Where I live, the bears generally avoid people at all costs. Everyone is armed to the teeth. There is a regulated bear season. And the bears know in no uncertain terms that people = death.
I’m sure that people living in the wilds of BC are similar, but it may be the moose calf factor that makes a difference.
We don’t have moose here, so there are no calves for the bears to bother. If the bears get any meat at all, it’s almost always a sheep or a hog– one reason why there aren’t too many sheep farms in West Virginia.
It does seem a bit odd that they would kill four bears to find the real killer, but that might be the only way to be certain that they got him. My guess is it is a him and not a her. If a black bear attacks a person, it is almost always predation from a male bear. It is almost never a female defending her cubs.
Bears don’t hunt in packs, regardless of what you might read in some bad pulp outdoor fiction, so she had only one killer.
However, bears do fight over carcasses, so several bears might have eaten on her.
It’s quite a tragedy that these things happen, but one must keep it in perspective. You are far more likely to be killed by a moose or a white-tailed deer in North America than by a black bear. In my state, I don’t think a single person has been killed by a black bear, and the only attacks have been when someone has done something stupid like trying to pet a wild bear.
I’m a little shocked that they killed 4 bears, as well. I don’t imagine that the First Nation band is happy with that, either. Most often they take wildlife and it’s associated spirit pretty seriously.
We have the world’s largest population of Black Bears. So I don’t think Conservation Officers are too picky. To be frank, there’s too many and not enough people interested in hunting them.
The reason why interest in hunting them has dropped is because according to the regulations, we need to take all edible parts with us– which are the limbs and the neck. Everything else can be left behind in the field.
Not everyone hunts just for meat though.
The bear could be a product of tourists and campers feeding them as well. The administration at Banff and Jasper struggles with tourists feeding bears.
There are islands on the west coast that are completely void of any natural food sources, with thriving colonies of ravens and raccoons, and bears in some cases, because kayakers leave garbage behind.
Last year in my area (rural Alaska, Talkeetna area) there was an over abundance of black bears. I believe this lead to a depleted food supply and caused them to look to humans/human dwellings for food. At a very small local restaurant, a black bear broke in through the window to attack the owner. Luckily she had her cell phone on her and was able to call her husband, who was close by, and he dispatched the bear. Normally, I would have thought the bear was lured in by the food smell, however this near attack happened in the early morning before any cooking had began. Although it is possible the bear had been hanging around for days, smelling the food, before it decided to try to get in the building.
The conservation practices of Canadian National Park Rangers were worst till the end of the last century. In order to know more, please read Sid Marty’s Black Grizzly of Whiskey Creek. I don’t think the practice has improved much. The Rangers are still prone to killing bears at slightest of provocation.
My personal opinion: Another golden opportunity to convince the provincial agencies to allow bear hunting using dogs. We need to put some of our breeds back to work.