Parks Canada has shut down its trapping program in Banff National Park after two young grizzly bears caught in a snare were attacked and killed by another hungry grizzly.
The program, aimed at furthering scientific research on grizzly bears, is suspended park-wide while the federal agency reviews the methods it uses to catch and collar bruins.
"This is an extremely unfortunate event and it has caused us to look at how we do things, make sure they're right and, if there are things we need to change, then we'll change them," chief park warden Ian Syme said Thursday.
"We use protocols that were developed internationally for capturing and handling grizzly bears and, in our 30 years of trapping bears in Banff, we've never seen this with predation.
"This is very rare."
The bear-trapping program began in the Spray Lakes region near Mount Fortune and Trail Centre in the southern end of the national park June 6 -- an area known for its high concentration of breeding female bears. Parks Canada had hoped to put radio collars on several bears.
These collars allow researchers to track their movements and see how they use the land.
When the agency's experienced bear handler and wildlife veterinarian arrived for the daily check of a snare near Mount Fortune on June 8, they discovered a dead sow, obviously killed by another bear. Four days later, they found another dead grizzly, this time a young male, in a snare about 10 kilometres away.
Officials do not know if the same bear is responsible for killing the two sub-adult bears, which were two to four years old. However, they suspect it could be a 135-kilogram boar that was captured in the area on Tuesday.
Bear experts suspect the attacks may have occurred because the park's grizzlies are stressed by a lack of food due to unusually high snow levels.
But Banff naturalist Douglas Leighton, who has long questioned the science surrounding bear research in Banff, said the deaths were unnecessary.
"These kind of experiences when bears are drugged and collared are the grizzly bear equivalent to an alien abduction. It is incredibly traumatic for highly intelligent animals," Leighton said.
Cathy Ellis is a reporter for the Rocky Mountain Outlook
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