Bear scare in neighbourhood

By Dan Hilborn
Published Sept. 1, 2004


A mama bear and two little cubs drew a large crowd of onlookers to North Burnaby on Monday morning, when they wandered into one of the most densely populated neighbourhoods in the city.

"This sow and her cubs came as a bit of a surprise," said Colin Copland, the B.C. conservation officer who helped tranquilize the bears and relocate them to the North Shore mountains. "This was a complete surprise. They just kind of appeared."

Reports of three bears wandering through town apparently started to come in around 3 a.m., when the 54-kg (120-pound) mother and her two 11-kg (25-lb.) cubs were first seen wandering near the PNE grounds in Vancouver.

As daylight approached and the noise and traffic increased, the three bears took refuge in the nearby residential district, where they hid out in a tree in the 4000 block of Albert Street.

Copland said several early attempts to tranquilize the bears from the ground were unsuccessful. Around 1 p.m., he was lifted up in a fire department ladder truck, where he managed to hit the bear with one good shot.

Although the mother landed with a thud after an estimated nine- metre (30-foot) fall, she appeared largely unharmed when she was finally released back into the wild, near the headwaters of the Seymour River, Copland said.

"She took a long fall," he said. "We would have much preferred her to be on the lower part of the tree, but she did survive. When we released her from the trap she looked a little sore, but she was OK."

The two cubs were also shot with tranquilizer darts, however, they were small enough to be caught in blankets when they fell out of the tree, he said.

Jennifer Warkentin, whose photo of the tranquilized mother bear was published in Tuesday's Vancouver Sun newspaper, said she was a little bit scared by the surprise visitors to her neighbourhood.

"I've lived up here for about a year and I've never seen anything bigger than a raccoon. Now I'm a little concerned," said the woman who is expecting her first baby in just eight more days.

"I'm thinking I'm going to have to watch out for bears when the baby is born."

Copland said bears are uncommon, but not unheard of, in North Burnaby.

He said the animals probably came from near Port Moody, where they could have wandered up the forested areas along Burrard Inlet.

Copland also noted that concerns for public safety were the primary reasons why conservation officers waited until full daylight before they tranquilized and captured the bears.

Copland noted that the last bear capture in Burnaby was four years ago, although there was an even rarer capture of a cougar last year.