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Bear situation nears crisis levels, police board chair says

"It was extremely loud," Swain said, of the blasts. “I was just really upset they couldn't put her down right away, that she was suffering for a little while, until they shot the last two times. I just wish there was a faster-acting tranquilizer.
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Greater Sudbury Police officers prepare to move a mother bear, shot in the process of trying to capture the animal. Photo by Darren MacDonald
"It was extremely loud," Swain said, of the blasts. “I was just really upset they couldn't put her down right away, that she was suffering for a little while, until they shot the last two times. I just wish there was a faster-acting tranquilizer.”

The incident highlights what has become a big challenge for local police, who are trained in handling firearms, but not in dealing with bears. The responsibility was forced on them when the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry scaled back its response to bear calls in 2012 to save money.

Greater Sudbury Police Staff Sgt. Craig Maki said the force has received some training from conservation officers, and any officer who handles a shotgun must get annual training in using the weapon.

But he said they're not specialists in bear control, and it wasn't part of the job description when he and others joined the force.

"I didn't go to police college 30 years ago to deal with bears,” Maki said. "We don't want to go to work and end up shooting a bear. That's not what we're about.

“I became a police officer for all kinds of reasons, just like everybody else who wears a uniform, but you didn't get bear training at police college."

But with more than 1,200 bear calls from the public already this year – compared to 550 in all of 2014 – Maki said it's a job police must handle as best they can. And with the rising number of calls, the chances police will have to kill a nuisance bear rises. They had to put down five last year and have killed seven this season.

"I can absolutely understand the angst of the public when something like that occurs,” Maki said. “Sometimes it takes more than four shots, sometimes it takes more than five. If we're dispatching a bear for a certain reason, when there is a threat to public safety, we have to make sure that threat is no longer in existence.

"But there are times we have to do it, and we try to do it as safely and as humanely as possible."

Gerry Lougheed Jr., who chairs Sudbury's police services board, said it may be time to create a bear protocol to formalize how police and other community partners deal with nuisance bears.

It would mean police working with the city and the MNRF to come up with a policy of some sort on how best to deal with incidents such as occurred Monday. It could mean going to the province for funding to improve training and the skill-set of officers in dealing with bears.

"I met with (Police Chief Paul Pedersen) a couple of days ago and asked that on our Sept. 9 board meeting that this be put on the agenda," Lougheed said, adding that the bear issue this year is close to crisis level.

“We (may) request there be a bear policy developed in our community so that, come next spring, we would actually have a format, perhaps some human resources and a protocol that would assist not only the officers, but the MNR, the community at large and, of course, city officials."

The goal would be to reduce the chances police would have to shoot the animals except in extreme situations. The current situation is stressful on the public and officers alike, Lougheed said, not to mention the bear population.

"As an animal lover myself, I would think (shooting a bear) would be a very horrible and difficult thing to do,” he said. “I think we can develop a policy that can make sure the bears that don't need to be euthanized are not, and those that are dangerous, we'll have a proper protocol to deal with them.

"So we're going to request there be a meeting of the three groups and they come back to us with a proper bear policy so we don't have these very difficult and emotional and practical decisions that have to be made."

And while summer 2015 has been a particularly rough year for bear-human encounters, Maki said the challenge will continue for the foreseeable future.

"The bears are not going away," he said.

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Darren MacDonald

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