The Current - What's the best way to manage grizzly bears?

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

A grizzly bear attacked a school group in a remote Indigenous community in central B.C. last week — and it brought to light an ongoing debate about what the best way to manage and co-exist with grizzly bears is. Some think hunting should be allowed back on the table — others say there's ways to co-exist with bears safely without resorting to killing them.

This ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that always over-delivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors, all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough. Defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights. And you can help us keep climbing.

Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. We're trying to capture the offending bear involved, and really just to analyze and assess that bear and trying to determine and get answers as to why this happened. Two bears have been captured near Bellacula, British Columbia, but authorities are still not sure whether either one was involved in an attack last week.

20 students and teachers from the Newhawk Nation were attacked by grizzly bears along the Belakula River. Three children, one adult, were airlifted to hospital with serious injuries. The remote community has seen increasing numbers of bear human interactions in recent years, leaving many wondering about the best way to deal with these predators. We'll get to the topic of grizzly bear management shortly. But first, I'm joined by Kirsten Milton. She is Deputy Chief and Director of Primary Care for the New Hulk Nation.

Kirsten, good morning. Good morning. How are people in your community doing? They're starting to, you know, gather a bit more. They're starting to just come together and, you know, accept that sense of community while we support each other. Coming down a little bit from, you know, just having a bit of high tension last week. So we're starting to gather a bit more and check in on each other and make sure everybody's okay. I know that the families of those who were involved in this attack have been asking for privacy,

but is there anything you can say about how people are doing right now? Well, yeah, the families have asked for a bit of privacy, so we've just offered as much help as we can in Newhawk territory, as well as in the lower mainland. We've set up enough connections that we hope will make them feel a little bit at ease while they're going through this difficult time. two bears were captured it's not clear as I mentioned whether they were the ones that were involved

but what do we know what can you tell us about the search for the bears there was a sow and two cubs and what happens if and when those bears are found so the bears that they did locate were just waiting for updates from the conservation officer as to what

the plan may be they did have to do their own investigation they took samples of all kinds from both clothing from the site and from the bears to determine whether or not either one of these bears were the ones that were a part of the attack. And if it's determined that those were the bears or the bears that were part of the attack are found, what happens then? We're not quite clear yet.

They did mention that if they happened to locate the one that was involved in the attack, if they're able to give, you know, a guarantee that most likely they will have to put that bear down. Other than that, they haven't mentioned any other plan yet. Can you talk a little bit about your community and, I mean, it's known as bear country. What does that mean? Every day we have bear sightings, grizzly bears, black bears all throughout our territory. You know, there's an entire tourist section of, the valley where people come in just to view bears on the river, and BC Park sort of supports

those, you know, bear guided areas. But in our community alone on our reservation, we have bear sightings weekly. You know, we make it well known to the community, where to stay away from, what areas might not be safe. You know, bears travel back and forth between both reserves. We have two reserve sites in our village, and we're surrounded by the river. So we share the river with the bears. You know, they give us space to do our fishing, and there's the time of the year that we stay away from the river when it's their time for fishing. How do you think an attack like this is going to change or will it change, how grizzles,

Bears are viewed in the community? I think it'll just give us, you know, a little bit more protocol safety. You know, the school, the staff, the students did everything right. We're taught from young ages. What it means to be bear aware and how to protect and care for ourselves. You know, people are out on the river daily fishing. People are out in the brush, mushroom picking, cutting wood, hunting. You know, we survive off the land.

There has, and we're going to talk more about this in a moment, but there has been talk in the wake of this attack about grizzly bear hunting and management. And your nation helped end grizzly bear hunting in British Columbia in 2017. What do you make of the calls to put that hunt back on the table? Well, there's a difference. You know, we have our own cultural management ways of caring for bear population, things that, we avoid and want to stay away from is trophy hunting. That is something we're not even going to entertain. All coastal first nations stood up to banish trophy hunting. We have enough tourism in our community for viewing bears, for heli skiing, for fishing. You know, for years,

we were the only area open for commercial fishing and it's depleted our stock. So those are the things that we're avoiding, you know, we're looking at just supporting the families that were impacted by this. There's a real sense, just finally, there's a real sense of respect in terms of how you talk about the bears. I mean, they are apex predators. There are a lot of people that have a different relationship, but the way that you speak about it seems to be grounded in respect.

Is that fair to say? Yes, definitely. Newhawk people are taught from a young age how to be respectful on the water, in the rivers, in the brush and what that means for us. This just happened to be, you know, we were in our class where it was just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Kirsten, thank you very much for speaking with us about this. And everybody I know is wishing the best for your community as well. I appreciate you being here. Thank you for having. Kirsten Milton, his deputy chief and director of primary care for the New Hawk Nation. The New Hawk Nation is in the Belakula Valley

in the central coast of British Columbia. Mark Boyce is a professor of ecology and holds the Alberta Conservation Association Chair in Fisheries and Wildlife at the University of Alberta. Mark, good morning to you. Hello. We don't know what actually happened at this point, but what do you make, based on what you do know, of what occurred in Bellacula? Well, exactly what interaction, the class that the children had with the bear is critical to understanding why. the bear attack and i think that there ought to be a bit more of a focus on on trying to understand what happened there but a female with cubs is the most dangerous uh animal we have in north

america i think and and getting in between uh cubs or if the female feels that her cubs have been threatened uh she's going to be an attack well no question about it so um the area where they were doing their hike is right across the road from where the school is and it's a very dense forest it's difficult to see very far

and so it's easy to imagine that some of the children may have gotten in between the cubs and the female and that was why she attacked There are upwards of something like 16,000 bears Grizzly bears in British Columbia.

And we're hearing that people in more rural and remote communities are saying there have been more grizzly bear sightings or encounters in or around communities. What do you think is causing that? Well, there are more people. And I haven't seen data that indicate that there are more encounters with bears. But I guess I wouldn't be surprised. that bears are doing really well in British Columbia. And from a conservation standpoint, the most important thing that we need to focus on is habitat

to ensure they're secure habitat for the bears. There are a couple of terms that they get thrown around when people talk about those encounters. One is a problem bear. Maybe there's a conflict bear. What is a conflict bear? Well, bears interact with humans in various ways, and some of those we deem to be unacceptable because that involves killing of livestock, getting into garbage, showing up in private

residences, and breaking into cabins, all those sorts of things are viewed as conflicts. and a bear that gets into a conflict situation is deemed to be a problem bear and there are a variety of ways of dealing with problem bears. One is relocation, so the bear is captured and relocated several hundred kilometers away and released again, and if a bear becomes a problem bear again, then the general rule is three strikes in you're out and so if they get into trouble three times

then they'll be removed from the population they'll be killed but there are bears that have been rewarded for dealing with humans in a way that we don't deem acceptable and it usually is around attractants.

So garbage or fruit trees or other beehives, other things that attract the bears and are likely to result in a conflict. And so dealing with the attractants is probably one of the most important things we can deal with that we can do to deal with bears in general. But if a bear becomes, you know, gets bad behaviors, then it's deemed to be a problem bear and it may be removed sometimes. I mentioned with Kirsten Milton that there used to be a bear hunt that hunting ban was put into place in 2017. And there were McCalls to reinstate it in part because of the growth of the population of perhaps problem bears. Have a listen to the executive director of the BC Wildlife Federation, Jesse Zeman.

With a lot of these conflict bears, where it switches is, in the past, some of these bears that had those behaviors would have been harvested by hunters. And where that's going to shift is it will end up being the conservation officer service that ends up harvesting these bears. You know, the question is, do you want hunters harvesting these bears, using them having funding go back into conservation, or do you want the taxpayer dollars to pay to resolve a number of these conflicts? He says with no hunting pressure that the bears and humans will have increasing interactions and that the inevitable consequences will come from that. Do you need to reinstate the hunt on these bears? No, I don't think that there's any evidence that that's true. Targeted harvest, so if you have a problem bear,

and one targets that individual for removal, that's what the conservation officers are going to do, and if they can come up with a way that hunters might be involved with that, that is a possible alternative solution, I suppose. But there's no evidence that having the hunt in British Columbia would reduce the frequency of conflicts. Most of the barriers that are taken are large males. They're often taken in remote areas. The government of British Columbia had very,

strict regulations about where bears could be taken and, you know, details about the hunt. And there were so few bears taken, you know, in the neighborhood of 200 out of 16,000, the population sort of control just wasn't there. I mean, that level of harvest is not going to result in checking the population size. I have to let you go, but just very briefly, have you ever encountered a grizzly bear in the wild? Oh, many, many times, yes. And you're here to talk about it, so. I keep my distance, and I am very careful, especially female with cubs. And I've had close encounters with females with cubs, and I'm nervous.

And I speak softly. I try to back out, get as far away from that situation as I can. Mark Boyce, good to speak with you. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Mark Boyce, a professor of ecology, he holds the Alberta Conservation Association Chair in Fisheries and Wildlife. at the University of Alberta. This has been the current podcast.

You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones. You can also listen online at cbc.ca.ca slash the current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.