Bella Coola residents terrified as grizzly bears destroy property, homes

The small community of Bella Coola has received national attention in recent days after a vicious attack by a grizzly bear on a group of students.

But residents of the area, located in a remote area of B.C.’s central coast, say this incident is by no means unique, with the deadly predators becoming increasingly more aggressive.

Now, some locals feel as though they are stretched thin trying to keep their homes safe.

‘Smashed to smithereens’

Tanyss Munro, the executive director of Start with Mothers, lives in the Bella Coola Valley. She has seen first hand how destructive, dangerous, and unsettling the encounters can be.

Last month, Munro and her husband returned to their home after being away for a couple of days.

As they were approaching their house, her husband noticed there was garbage strewn about their driveway. Munro says he immediately knew something was very wrong.

“He could see that our…front door had been broken through,” she said.

“And what had happened is that a grizzly — it looks like a sow and her two almost full-grown cubs — had gone in and found the fridge and dragged the fridge actually halfway out and across the bed and everything else.”

The animals had completely demolished the kitchen.

“I’m talking counters, cupboards, drawers, glasses, plates, and everything else,” she said.

The couple also has a trailer on the same property, and Munro says the damage there was even worse than in the house.

“They had ripped off, and folded in half, the steel-clad door and gone in there and just demolished that,” she said.

“They wrecked the furnace. We had just had it filled up with propane. And that was all gone.”

The bears had dragged the stove across the room, “and just everything was smashed,” she said.

A cupboard filled with plates was “smashed to smithereens.”

“There was nothing left bigger than a little part of a plank.”

The pair was stunned.

“It’s like when you see something like that, it is just too big to register.”

The nightmare continues

Munro’s husband made repairs to the property, but the bears returned.

“Every day, the bears would come and knock it down again,” she said.

He finally boarded it up completely, but this didn’t stop the animals.

“They couldn’t quite tell where the door was, so before they ripped off the wood that boarded up the door, the bear clawed and peeled off part of the outside wall of the trailer,” Munro said.

Tanyss Munro’s home in the Bella Coola Valley was ravaged by grizzly bears. (Submitted)

“So it just peeled it off, just like it was wrapping paper.”

The animals kept returning.

“We put up an electric fence right around our own home and put two-by-fours all over the door,” Munro said.

“So that dissuaded them, at least for the time being.”

Then the animals destroyed the couple’s pump house.

Munro says they called the BC Conservation Officer Service (BCCOS) and pushed for help.

“We said, ‘You’ve got to come, please bring the traps here, please do something,’” she said.

But help took time.

Only one conservation officer on duty

Members of the BCCOS were part of a BC General Employees’ Union (BCGEU) general strike, which began in September and lasted eight weeks.

The province-wide strike had left only one conservation officer to serve the entire Bella Coola Valley, Munro says.

The officer arrived several days after the first break-in, and by that point, the grizzlies had attacked more homes in the area.

“There were other break-ins, but nothing like the damage of our place,” she said.

“There have been a couple of break-ins where it happened to be older women in their homes while the bear was there. Luckily, the bear turned around after raiding the freezer, which happened to be close to their outside door.”

BCCOS officers set a trap, and a grizzly was caught.

But the bear wasn’t alone.

“They could hear the sound, about 100 yards away, maybe 50 yards away, of one or two other bears in the woods,” Munro said.

“I wish that they had taken them out.”

Residents increasingly uncomfortable

Bella Coola residents say they’ve always lived alongside bears, and children from a young age are taught to be bear aware.

But recently, the encounters have been increasingly uncomfortable.

Sharon Lansdowne, whose family runs a wilderness lodge, says they recently had an unwelcome guest.

“The bear busted down the door,” Lansdowne said.

She said another woman in the area — a grandmother — had the same thing happen to her.

Lansdowne also described a moment at her own home when she looked out the window and saw a grizzly standing right outside her five-year-old son’s bedroom.

B.C. Wildlife Federation says encounters are on the rise

The B.C. Wildlife Federation (BCWF) says what has been happening in Bella Coola is part of a larger trend in the province.

And it puts the blame partially on the end of the grizzly hunt in 2017, which was done “due to popular opinion, with no scientific rationale,” the federation said.

“In the 10 years preceding the ban, calls to the [BCCOS] concerning grizzly conflicts ranged from 300 to 500 a year, peaking between April and November,” it said.

“Since the ban, calls about grizzly bears doubled, to nearly 1,000 a year.”

BCWF executive director Jesse Zeman says conflicts with the predators will keep getting worse until the province reinstates “science-based wildlife management.”

“When the hunt was closed, we predicted that over time, human-grizzly conflicts would increase, but we also know that bears that learn bad behaviours teach those same behaviours to their offspring,” said Zeman.

Are hungry grizzlies pushing black bears out of the valley?

Munro says it doesn’t appear as though there are any black bears left in Bella Coola Valley, which she says is likely because there are too many grizzlies — many of whom are very hungry.

“The grizzlies that we’ve seen up around our place, they’re all skinny,” she said.

“Earlier in the summer [there was a] sow with her one-year-old cub, and they were both skinny, and then this one also was too thin, especially for this time of year.”

‘The new normal?’

In just the last two months, the BCCOS says there have been several violent interactions between humans and grizzlies around the province. These include attacks on hunters in both Fort St. James and Fort Steele within the same week at the end of September. On Oct. 12, two hikers were seriously injured in an attack near Prince George.

“This is the new normal,” the BC Wildlife Federation said.

Still, authorities say this week’s school interaction was atypical.

Speaking at a media event Friday, BCCOS inspector Kevin Van Damme said attacks with this many victims are extremely rare.

“In my 34 years of experience, I have not seen an attack like this with a large group of people,” he said.

Where do we go from here?

Things are out of balance and need to change before there is more loss of human life, Munro says.

“It’s like an experiment we’re doing here in the Bella Coola Valley. We’re trying to find out how humans and grizzlies live together,” she said

“Everybody wants that. But how can we actually do it safely?”

She says she is not a hunter but believes that when it comes to human life versus those of animals, human life has to be put first.

“I just have to wonder if maybe some of those children might have been spared at the school, had we been more decisive in action,” Munro said.

— With files from Michelle Meiklejohn and Jack Rabb.