If you’re a conservation officer, you might think your job is to conserve things. But that wasn’t the case for one B.C. conservation officer. His job required him to kill rather than protect bears from harm.
Officer Bryce Casavant was suspended without pay after he refused to kill to two black bear cubs.
The two cubs were found in Port Hardy wandering around a house. They ended up climbing a tree next to the mobile home and were removed by some firefighters and the conservation officer.
It is believed that the babies were looking for food. Their mother had been killed after she repeatedly broke into a mobile home to raid a freezer of meat and salmon, according to the CBC News.
“[The mother bear] was a problem, but these cubs did nothing,” Robin Campell, the manager at the North Island Wildlife Recovery Association, told CBC News.
Casavant received orders to euthanize the two cubs.
He ignored his orders and instead tranquilized the ears and brought them to a veterinary hospital. They were stationed at the North Island Wildlife Recovery Association in Errington on Vancouver Island.
“It’s a horrible situation, I mean, to have to put down an animal of any kind,” Casavant told The National. “Unfortunately, I’ve been in that situation myself and no body wants to deal with it. The public generally does not want to see it happen.”
Campbell applauded Casavant and said it was the right thing to do since the cubs were not habituated to humans can be reintroduced to the wild.
Campbell said the order to kill the cubs was unusual since they were scared of humans and could be released back into the wild.
“In 30 years, this is the first time we’ve ever had an issue like this,” he said. “there has to be some kind of misunderstanding… hopefully somebody will come to their senses.”
Casavant’s suspension was reported in a community paper and an online petition was started that asked Environment Minister Mark Polak to reinstate him. His pay was reinstated after some public outcry.
Casavant never went back to his old position as an officer, but instead moved on to become a senior compliance and enforcement officers with the B.C.’s Ministry of Forests Lands and Natural Resource Operations.
He also was accepted as a doctoral candidate to Royal Roads University to study social aspects of conflict wildlife. Casavant said he isn’t sure whether or not he would make the same decisions about the bear cubs today.
“That’s a difficult question because it’s complicated,” he told The National. “The reason why I made that decision had a lot less to do with emotion and a lot more to do with the legal authorities provided to constables and officers. So my decision-making process at the time, there was more of a legal basis to it than there was an emotional basis to it.”
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