Clio Smeeton, president of the Cochrane Ecological Institute (CEI), says the government erred in the release of a bear CEI rehabilitated, which led to it being shot on Monday.
Charlie, a 16-month black bear, was shot about 120 km from where the bear was released when it wandered into a homeowner’s yard.
The cub was rescued in 2018 and sent to the CEI after more than 4,000 public petitions swayed a recent government decision to change legislation barring sanctuaries from rehabilitating bears.
Previous to the 2012 rehabilitation ban, Smeeton said the CEI had been rehabilitating bears since 1986 and in all that time never had an issue with one of its releases coming into conflict with humans.
According to a government press release, Charlie was exhibiting abnormal behaviour demonstrated by his migration since release and his habituation behaviour.
“We are saddened to learn of the death of this young male black bear. Typically, we do not expect a young black bear to wander or remain near humans. Bears that become habituated to humans start to see us as a source of food and become dangerous,” said Rob Simieritsch, South Saskatchewan Region Resource Manager, Alberta Environment and Parks.
Smeeton says had the government taken her advice and released Charlie with Maskwa, the cub he was rescued with, done it in the winter – as stats show higher survival rate than summer releases – and chose a more remote location, Charlie would still be alive.
Smeeton said Charlie’s location had a greater population and recent fire activity had caused habitat displacement that was forcing bears to move.
She added that at no time did Charlie exhibit habituation behaviour while in rehabilitation.
“The government said they were going to send a team of experts out to evaluate if the bears were habituated, they didn’t do that,” said Smeeton, who added the only people sent out were the ones setting the traps to move the animals.
Since the shooting the government has stated that CEI will not be allowed to rehabilitate bears until a review is conducted.
However, Smeeton said since there was never an evaluation conducted on the bears by the government, she is not sure how a review is possible.
Jess Sinclair, press secretary for Environment and Parks, said the bears were evaluated in the fall when they were originally scheduled to be released but that plan was delayed by bad weather.
She added that the locations for release are chosen by the department’s bear experts.
