A day after a bear was shot and killed in Newmarket, ministry officials and police are defending themselves.
When a black bear climbed out of a tree in a residential backyard on Monday, shots were fired and neighbours were furious.
Police were called to the area before 6 a.m. and Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources was notified around the same time. It took nearly three hours for officials with the ministry to arrive.
“Our officers went to the Aurora district office to gather up the weaponry, the drugs, that sort of thing, gather that all together and get ready with any other gear that they needed, and then they would have headed to the Newmarket location,” says MNR spokesperson Jolanta Lowalski.
According to the MNR, the response time for bear calls in the GTA is about two to three hours. In this case, it was too late.
“We did provide some updates as the call was ongoing to the Ministry of Natural Resources. While looking for an estimated time of arrival for them to bear to assist,” says Const. Andy Pattenden.
“Unfortunately, it ended for us at 8:46 in the morning when the bear decided to come down the tree.”
That's when police say the animal became a "public safety risk". Both police and ministry officials knew there was a bear in the neighbourhood, after two calls came in for it over the weekend.
According to the MNR, a team was on standby, but those officers would only respond to a call if the bear wasn't on the move.
“My understanding is that the bear was moving around a lot on the weekend, and we can't shoot a moving bear. It’s really difficult to dart an animal that's moving,” Lowalski says.
That means, the MNR wouldn't have tranquilized the bear if it was running or climbing out of a tree.
There are only four MNR officials in the Aurora office trained to deal with situations like this and that small team covers all of York Region. Often, when a call comes in for a wild animal, the police get to the scene first.
“The police aren't trained to tranquilize, trap and carry a bear and release them into the wild. That’s not what police do. That's an MNR role and no disrespect to the MNR people, but they've been cut and some of the bear work they use to do, they no longer do and that's become a big problem across Ontario, particularly in municipalities like York Region,” says CTV public safety analyst, Chris Lewis.
Officers in the area often receive calls for wildlife, but they aren't trained to contain wild animals, such as bears. That could change though – officers will sit down to a debrief in the coming days to go over what happened on Monday and to see if they could do anything differently next time.
