Injured bear won’t be moved, but province to review policy
While insisting there’s no need to rescue an injured black bear west of the city, the province said Thursday it’s reviewing its policy banning rehabilitation of such animals.
As the young bear — which has been in a field alongside a highway near Calgary for the past two weeks — attracts calls for human help, provincial officials defended the decision to let nature take its course.
“We totally understand how it looks and the emotional response, but he’s able to move around and he’s fairly mobile,” said Paul Frame, a carnivore specialist with Alberta Environment and Parks.
“To capture a bear against its will is pretty stressful ... we don’t feel the need for any intervention.”
But that position could change next year, he said, now that the province’s seven-year-old policy banning rescue societies from rehabilitating and releasing bears, wild canines, large cats and pronghorns is now under the microscope.
Frame said emerging research showing such treatment does not habituate the animals is being taken into consideration, as are practises in other provinces and U.S. states that differ from Alberta’s.
“We hope to have something finalized next spring when bears emerge from hibernation,” said Frame, adding there are no guarantees the policy will change.
Currently, any injured animals turned in to rescue societies must be handed over to Alberta Fish and Wildlife officials, whose options include sending them to zoos or euthanizing them.
The bear has been pacing in a farmer’s field along Highway 22 just south of the Trans-Canada Highway, hobbling with what appears to be an injured left hind leg.
It’s provoked an outpouring of demands the province capture the bear to treat it or allow a private rescue group to do so.
Fish and Wildlife officers say they’ve been monitoring the bear — that they believe to be around 3-1/2 years old and not orphaned — at the location for the past two weeks.
It’s been eating, they say, and will soon go into hibernation.
But the province is mishandling the bear, which appears to be an orphaned yearling, said Clio Smeeton of the Cochrane Ecological Institute and Wildlife Reserve.
“The responsibility of Fish and Wildlife is to catch it and euthanize it if it’s not savable,” said Smeeton, adding she’s willing to accept the bear at her facility.
The bruin’s presence in the farmer’s field is becoming unsafe, with members of the public bound to start feeding it, she added.
Frame said one member of the public tried to capture the bear but wasn’t successful.
And while Smeeton said she welcomed the province’s policy review, she voiced skepticism the announcement was genuine.
“It might be an attempt to fob people off — I would make sure to follow it up next March,” she said.
The review, said Smeeton, is long overdue given data contrary to the province’s prohibition has been around for 30 years.
“There’s a huge body of peerreviewed public research that’s been coming out since the late 1980s,” she said.
“We’d been rehabilitating bears since 1985 and it’s worked fine.”
The subject came up last April when three bear cubs were discovered abandoned in a Banff National Park washroom.
The animals were eventually flown to a private wildlife rescue outfit in Ontario, with plans to return them to the mountain park.