{"id":70596,"date":"2025-07-17T18:43:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T18:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/70596\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T18:43:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T18:43:09","slug":"shooting-of-bear-that-swam-to-tiny-canadian-island-frustrates-first-nations-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/70596\/","title":{"rendered":"Shooting of bear that swam to tiny Canadian island frustrates First Nations | Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

The journey of Tex, a young grizzly bear that gripped public attention in Canada<\/a> after swimming to a tiny populated island, came to a violent end this week after he was shot and killed without authorization, despite plans by Indigenous groups to relocate him.<\/p>\n

The four-year-old bear\u2019s landfall on 25 May on Texada Island, a tiny island off the west coast, set off a controversy between differing interpretations of how to treat wild predators. Its shooting on Tuesday has advocates calling for the British Columbia government to act faster when it comes to working with First Nations on environmental stewardship.<\/p>\n

Provincial officials have long insisted Tex posed a danger to residents. Although there was no order to kill the animal, they said it had already \u201cstalked\u201d two people on the mainland before swimming to Texada, and had been moved once before. If the bear threatened public safety, they declared, conservation officers would need to respond.<\/p>\n

Local First Nations communities offered weeks ago to rehome the bear to their territories. But some of the island\u2019s 1,200 residents felt Tex should be euthanized instead, said Katrin Glenn, a longtime Texada resident and the creator of the \u201cSave Tex\u201d Facebook group.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always said, Texada Island is not safe for him. And it\u2019s not because of the land, it\u2019s not because of anything but the people here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew there were people driving around with guns.\u201d<\/p>\n

The province\u2019s conservation officer service said on Tuesday it was investigating the death on the island of a grizzly bear, which they confirmed had been shot.<\/p>\n

Bear behaviour specialists said<\/a> Tex was simply a young male bear gaining independence by exploring. Glenn said she saw Tex at the end of May around her farm perimeter. \u201cHe had followed my fence line very respectfully,\u201d she said. \u201cHe was a very gentle bear.\u201d<\/p>\n

In June, several First Nations communities offered a strategy to relocate the bear, and a coordinated effort between the Sh\u00edsh\u00e1lh, Tla\u2019amin and Homalco First Nations to relocate the bear to Homalco territory was under way when Tex was killed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are deeply saddened by this outcome. Tex\u2019s life mattered, and our Nations had come together in a good way to find a peaceful solution,\u201d said Tla\u2019amin Nation in a statement.<\/p>\n

Wayne McCrory, a biologist, wrote to the province last month highlighting his support<\/a> for a proposal by the Mamalilikulla First Nation to move Tex. The nation\u2019s chief, John Powell, said on Wednesday he was devastated the bear was killed and angry the government was slow to listen to Indigenous communities. The CBC reported<\/a> at the end of June that the three First Nations were still waiting for government officials to back their removal plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew the writing was on the wall when there was resistance with the government,\u201d Powell said, adding that \u201cit really has to examine its approach to this situation, because this is not the last time this will happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Randene Neill, the province\u2019s minister of water, land and resource stewardship, said on Tuesday that authorities had been working in partnership with the First Nations to move Tex.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe timing [of the bear\u2019s death] is especially unfortunate,\u201d Neill said.<\/p>\n

But Nicholas Scapillati, head of the Grizzly Bear Foundation, said the tragedy of Tex\u2019s death contained an important lesson for the province. \u201cI hope his death wasn\u2019t in vain and we do have a mechanism in place to take what can be actually learned from a situation like this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Powell noted that British Columbia passed legislation in 2019 to align with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and said the Tex incident showed the government still had a long way to go when it comes to consulting with First Nations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope they examine this result objectively,\u201d he said. \u201cTheir inaction was responsible for killing this bear.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The journey of Tex, a young grizzly bear that gripped public attention in Canada after swimming to a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":70597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[159,67,132,68,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-70596","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114870052881216660","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}