A second recent bear attack in Metro Vancouver injures Port Coquitlam man
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A rise in bear-human conflicts and a string of recent attacks are highlighting the need for B.C. to renew its focus on the Bear Smart program, an expert says.
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On Sunday, a man was bitten by a black bear outside his apartment building in Port Coquitlam, according to the B.C. Conservation Officer Service. The attack came a week after a three-year-old girl was mauled by a black bear on the back deck of her Maple Ridge home.
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Both incidents occurred in “interface areas,” where urban development has pushed into bear habitat, said Lana Ciarniello.
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“In areas where there is garbage accessible to bears, bears will become what we call food-conditioned, and they make that association between humans and food security and obtaining food,” she said. “Those behaviours together produce our most dangerous bears in the front country.”
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As development continues to encroach on bear habitat, Ciarniello said, bears have fewer places to go.
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“We manage bears by being reactive. We shoot a lot of black bears every year,” she said. “We need to become more proactive and look at coexistence and to live together. It’s going to take some giving on the human side. The bears have already given.”
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Individuals may be doing the right thing — having clean yards, making garbage bins bear-proof, for example — but preventing bear conflicts requires a community effort. “Things like yards and borders are human abstract concepts. A bear doesn’t recognize those,” said Ciarniello.
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In both the Port Coquitlam and Maple Ridge incidents, the bears were eventually tracked and killed.
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Last year, the B.C. Conservation Officer Service received more than 13,672 calls about black bears. Officers killed 211 bears, including 178 for public safety reasons after a bear-human interaction. In 33 cases, the bear was euthanized for welfare reasons.
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Bear-human interactions increased this year compared to 2025. There have been 6,133 calls to the service about black bears in the first half of 2026, up from 5,481 during the same period last year — an increase of about 12 per cent.
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Ciarniello, whose research helped pioneer B.C.’s Bear Smart program, said the province needs to renew its focus on the conservation program, which works to address the root causes of human-bear conflicts.
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“It’s an excellent program. Unfortunately, it’s fallen by the wayside the last few years and we are starting to see the results of that,” she said.
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in the backcountry, dogs can be another factor in turning a bear encounter into a conflict.
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On Friday, a woman hiking in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island was injured by a black bear.
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The incident occurred in Stoney Hill Regional Park when the woman and her off-leash dogs encountered a sow and its cub. The sow attacked the dogs and the woman intervened, receiving undisclosed injuries from the bear. Given the attack was defensive in nature, the bear was not tracked.
