Animal rescue bitter over bear death
The leader of the rescue that captured the West Island bear is bitter that the authorities put it down. People are angry with the Quebec wildlife ministry which ordained the killing of the young bear.
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Kate
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Meezly 09:53 on 2021-05-26 Permalink
I signed the petition.
Clément 10:30 on 2021-05-26 Permalink
The ministry or the minister? I doubt the minister himself ordered the bear to be put down.
Also, dammed if you do, damned if you don’t. If a kid got attacked next week when the bear returned, people would also be asking the minister to resign as well.
Kate 11:12 on 2021-05-26 Permalink
Clément: Thanks for the clarification. I’ve changed it to the ministry.
Is it reasonable to think the bear would come back? Nobody knows how or why it got onto the island, and if it had been brought to a wooded area off-island, would there be any likelihood it could (or would want to) find its way back here?
It’s not like there are a lot of stories about people living in southern Quebec getting savaged by black bears.
Clément 11:19 on 2021-05-26 Permalink
If the bear found easy food (garbage, compost pile, etc), it will definitively come back, unless they ship it out hundreds of miles into the wilderness, where it will likely compete for territory with an established and stronger bear, and possibly suffer a similar fate, as it was just a one-year old bear.
walkerp 11:31 on 2021-05-26 Permalink
Black bears aren’t going to attack anybody. Would rather it be left to survive in the wild and perhaps die or perhaps not than just have it shot by humans because we are too lame to be able to co-exist with creatures whose space we took over.
steph 11:32 on 2021-05-26 Permalink
How did it get on the island in the first place?
Kate 11:40 on 2021-05-26 Permalink
steph, there’s no knowing. I saw one item where a wildlife guy surmised either it swam across at one of the narrower water channels, or it boarded a vehicle from curiosity and was driven into town, although you’d think the driver would’ve noticed, when the vehicle was opened, that he had a bear aboard.
su 11:43 on 2021-05-26 Permalink
I wish the rescue group had just left the ministry out of it, and taken the little displaced bear to the sanctuary themselves.
Spi 12:32 on 2021-05-26 Permalink
It had been reported that the bear was no longer scared by loud noises or humans, if that is the case then it would only be a matter of time before it finds itself near human habitat looking for food.
John B 13:53 on 2021-05-26 Permalink
Some notes from the story that don’t appear to have made it to the comments here:
The animal rescue folks say they had multiple sanctuaries lined up if the bear couldn’t be returned to the wild.
For su: It appears that the ministry must be notified for bear incidents. The animal rescue folks had to wait for several hours to deal with the bear because a Ministry officer hadn’t shown up yet. When the officer showed up he/she wasn’t equipped to deal with a bear.
IMO the ministry dropped the ball here. Literally all they had to do was give the animal rescue group the OK to place the bear in a sanctuary. Instead they decided to take the bear away and kill it.
Meezly 16:40 on 2021-05-26 Permalink
From the article:
The bear was secured and placed in a cage in a ministry pickup truck. Rescue groups were told it would be released in a secluded area.
“If this was not possible, we were okay with that,” Dussault said. “But we had lined up several refuges who were willing to take the bear, and let it live out its days in captivity, but in a suitable, large environment.”
Since bear captures in Montreal are a rare event, the saving of one bear would not have required many resources, Dussault said. He suggested ministry officials couldn’t be bothered to handle the situation on a holiday long weekend.
“And now we have this sad ending. If they just could have taken the hand we offered them, it would have taken just a few minutes.”
The petition calling for the resignation of Dufour cites the ministry’s decision to euthanize deer rather than put them in reserves, the euthanization of the bear, and the ministry’s refusal to fund animal rescue organizations as reasons for his removal.