A Tri-City woman is taking issue with claims that conservation officers had no prior knowledge of a sow and two cubs that were killed last week for trying to den in a Port Coquitlam backyard.
Deanna Levas said she believes she saw the animals in December, although she lives across the Coquitlam River from Salisbury Avenue, where the bears were shot, and called the B.C. Conservation Officers Service because the bruins were playing outside her yard and may have been responsible for chewing her Christmas light wiring.
Levas said she was concerned for her family, including her grandchild, but was told the animals were not an immediate danger and could be there all winter.
"In the end, it was like, 'I'm not going to phone, they're not going to do anything,'" said Levas, who lives on Hughes Place.
The deaths of the three bears, which should have been hibernating but stayed awake because they could feed off people's garbage, has generated controversy in the community, with letters to the editor and Facebook commentary on the Tri-City News' website.
But one of the conservation officers involved in the incident said he had no choice but to destroy the animals because the had become habituated to garbage and were so unafraid of humans they were prepared to live in someone's backyard.
Officer Cody Ambrose said relocating the animals wasn't an option because if they were transported locally, they would have returned to the neighbourhood and if they were moved further away, where snow is deeper, they would have died of starvation.
"These three bears were quite garbage-conditioned," Ambrose said. "When I arrived on the scene, they had gotten into three different garbage cans on the street."
A record check revealed that the COS service received nine calls about the mother bear and two cubs but none indicated the three were problem bears.
"The main point there is we need to know whether it's a habituated bear or if it's a bear sighting and if garbage in the neighbourhood is a problem," said Ambrose, who explained that the COS make decisions based on how garbage-habituated the bears are. While the service received calls about the bears, it was unaware of the extent of the problem and if the information had been received earlier in the year, more could have been done, he said.
Levas said she called about those bears numerous times and about other bears earlier in the year and believes the conservation officers should have been more proactive to save the PoCo trio.
"They're there because of people's garbage. That happens in life," she aid. "But do you have to go out and shoot them?"
Levas said she is upset a Conservation Officer Service spokesperson said at first that nobody called in about the bears. "They said nobody complained about them, that's poppycock."
Ambrose said the goal of wildlife management is to keep people safe and the best way to keep bears out of neighbourhoods is to lock up garbage carts or keep trash and green waste indoors.
"Wildlife management is a complex issue and a very heated issue, too."
Last year, six bears were destroyed in PoCo for becoming habituated to people's garbage. In all, 14 bears were killed by conservation officers in 2011 in the Tri-Cities.
