Vancouver police shot and killed a bear that was roaming a busy neighborhood on Sunday, the department confirmed.
The speaker is a sergeant. Steve Addison says police were called to the easternmost part of the city around 11 a.m. to report a black bear.
“We started watching him in the hope that he would find his way back to a safer place,” he wrote in an email.
“Unfortunately, we were forced to shoot the bear… She had started coming in and out of yards, approaching people and pets dangerously, and walking in traffic jams.”
Addison said police had contacted the British Columbia Environmental Protection and Animal Control Service for assistance, but “they had not yet arrived when we were forced to kill the bear.”
The BC Conservation Service confirmed that she was not present, postponing questions from the Vancouver Police Department.
A man who lives nearby told CTV News that she heard the shots just as she was getting ready to take her puppy for a walk.
A photo of the scene, just one block from the busy intersection of Hastings Street and Border Road, shows a yellow police strip blocking the intersection of Pender and Esmond streets. Although the place where the bear was shot is in Burnaby, it is close to the Vancouver border. A post on social media by another resident said the bear had been tracked for 15 blocks by police before being shot.
Defenders say colder than average spring weather has reduced this year’s salmon harvest, prompting more polar bears to enter residential areas in search of food.
On Saturday, Christine Miller of the North Shore Black Bear Society said CTV News residents should keep all leftover food from their household garbage and instead put it in organic waste bins, which are usually collected earlier in the morning.
“If we could reduce the amount of unnatural food sources for them, they would be willing to come back and eat grass and hopefully find berries soon,” said Miller, who added that keeping bears out of the trash kept them going. alive.
“If a bear finds a lot of food available in the community, it will spend more and more time in residential areas,” Miller said. “And that usually has a very bad result for the bear.”
With files from Shannon Patterson and Megan Gill from Vancouver from CTV News
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