Records of 77 bear cubs killed by people in British Colombia, Canada, in 2021 had been obtained by the wildlife charity The Fur-Bearers, which has made an official complaint about it. Many of the killings were not related to public safety, and the cubs, who may have been orphans as a consequence of trophy hunting, were not properly assessed.
Lesley Fox, executive director of The Fur-Bearers, said, “It’s certainly concerning anytime an animal is killed whether that number is one or 77. I think it requires a second look. We need to have a plan on how we respond to young bears. They really need to come up with a plan when we find young bears in the field, to have a system that properly evaluates them, and gets them into care should they need it or potentially be evaluated by an expert who is appropriately trained.”
Although non-lethal alternatives to deal with human-bear conflict have been studied, Marc Plamondon of the Conservation Officer Service told CTV News, “We do everything we can, such as these proactive media releases, to try and get these people to remove the attractants and prevent that from happening in the first place.” The tragic deaths of so many bears are humans’ fault. Not only people are the ones who deliberately shoot them dead (including trophy hunters), but they attracted them to the places they are seeing as a nuisance by leaving garbage, barbecue grease traps, and pet food outside, in the natural territory where the bears live but which has now been occupied by these alien species of the African primate known as Homo sapiens. And, sadly, the skin of some of these killed bears may end up on the heads of the British Queen’s guards, while perfectly valid cruel-free alternatives have been rejected by the UK government.
