4 - Wednesday, September 10, 1986 - North Shore News

THE INVASION of the North Shore by black bears this
summer appears to have had a Rambo effect on our lone
so-called conservation officer.

There were so many reports
of bears foraging in the suburbs
that it seemed the answer has
been provided to the ancient
question: Where did the bear go
when he went over Wie moun-
tain?

Answer: He came here.

With complaints coming in at
the rate of 20 a day, the hand-
ful of conservation officers
from the B.C. environment
ministry simply gave up all
hope of treating the bears in an
enlightened manner and grabb-
ed for their guns.

Complaints inultiplied from
100 through the previous sum-
mer season to nearly 900 so far
this yea’. This isn’t, incidental-
ly, a really big deal. Last year
was a lower-than-average year
for bear sightings in the Lower
Mainland. In 1984, there were
1,149 complaints!

Bok Hunter

@ strictly personal ®

city or municipality where bears
come prowling in such
numbers.

Bears and barbecues and hot
tubs don’t mix. [ grant that.
But | must admit that this
summer's bear wars didn’t leave
me with a very good feeling
about the way we handle suct
problems, any more so than it
was possible to fee! good about
the SPCA‘*s stupidity in
shooting a sea lion at Expo, or
the PNE instituting pig races
and using live chickens in games
of chance.

On a scale of one to 10, |
would judge the combined per-
formances of the provincial en-
vironment department, the
SPCA and the PNE this surn-
mer as rating about a ‘‘2.”’

And the only reason they get
a score that high is because they
haven't reverted to wide-spread
use of deadly poisons.

like yahoos this vear.

A conservation’ officer
whose only response to a wild
animal trespassing on urban
space is to open fire surely
should be given a new job
description. How about “‘ex-
terminaior?”*

As for the SPCA, what do we
really expect of an organization
that started out trying to pro-
tect. animals from inhumane
treatment, and ended up fune-
tioning mainly as a kind of
animal Buchenwald where un-
wanted pets are put to sleep?

In all, environment depart-
ment hitmen shoot an average
of 800 to 1,000 black bears each
year, about 10 per cent of them
in the Lower Mainland.

It was interesting to read the
comments of a biologist with
the Pennsylvania Game Com-
mission who said that if con-
servation officers in his home
state started blasting away at
bears the way ours do, they’d
be ‘‘cut into cubes’’ by public
opinion.

ficials do not kill bears. They
capture about 100 of them an-
nually and relocate them, just
as we were doing for a short
time here in’ B.C., before
restraint forced a cutback in the
environment department's
budget.

As itis now, the entire North
Shore is patrolled — although
that’s too stroug a word — bya
Single conservation officer,
whose office is in Surrey.

You have to keep this an
mind when you hear envicon-
ment ministry spokesman argue
ing that the humane trapping of
bears is unreliable.

The truth is, culvert traps
work, Eve had bears captured
in my back yard in them. It
never took more than two
nights to snag the intruders. But
this was back a few vears ago,
before funds for conservation
were slashed.

The trick is for the conserva-
tion officer to be able to arrive
on the scene quickly after a
bear is spotted. If too much
time passes, the bear naturally
moves onward.

A conservation officer based
in Surrey simply cannot res-
pond quickly to a complaint in
Dollarton or British Properties
or Cypress Park, where most of
the bear sightings have occur-
red.

Our senior conservation of-
ficer, Bruce Lemke, defends his
department's shoot-to-kill tac-
tics on a shortage of manpower.

enough men throughout the
year just ta cover the peak
periods,” he mutters. Ah, a
bottom-liner

And the poiton ‘ine seems £0
be sin it comes to bears, it’s
cheaper :o kill than to relocate,

To hase encountered half a
dozen black beitis just around
my home wii summer. As soon
as thes spotted sne they took
off. i heuid add fiat had to be
quick, Prcause 7 was about to
take ail omescli ce he apposite
direction | digs dna flee im.
mediels

foaun know) hew many
other peomte feel his way, bur}
don't) call the environment
depattmen, oor anybody else
when J spot a bear any longer, |
awlert my neighbors and warn
my kids to stay lose to the
house.

We are especially cautious
during the salmonberry season,
but the fact is that nobody in
the Lower Mainland has EVER
been killed by a bear.

They are probably much less
of a hazard than SPCA goons
running around with rifles.

At the very least, the North
Shore deserves its own bear
warden, somebody based here,
available to respond quickly,
with a mandate to capture and
ship the bears back to the other
side of the mountain — but not
just to start blasting away.
Good grief! What century are
we in?

There is no other Canadian Otherwise, they ull behaved In Pennsylvania, game of- “We can’t pretty well keep

re 2 1

WV house burns

WEST VANCOUVER District blaze at 9:48 a.m. at
Fire Department is investigating a Westwood Drive,
blaze that destroyed a partially
built house Sept. 3.

Firefighters were called to the

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