Conservation officers killed 33 bears in the West Kootenay and Boundary regions in 2024 with the highest number – eight bears – in Nelson.
Provincial numbers were released by the Ministry of the Environment and Parks on Jan. 20. Nelson's number puts the city in a three-way tie for the third highest number of bear deaths in B.C. along with Prince George and Quesnel.
Only Williams Lake (13) and Kamloops (11) had more.
In the West Kootenay and Boundary, there were five bear deaths in Trail, three each in Grand Forks and Christina Lake, and two each in Kaslo, Rossland, Salmo, and Fruitvale.
In Warfield, Mirror Lake, Castlegar, Greenwood and Winlaw, one bear was killed in 2024.
Across the province, bear deaths at the hands of conservation officers dropped about 49.7 per cent from 603 in 2023 to 303 in 2024.
Bear death numbers for the past few years in Nelson were one in 2023, 21 in 2022, 11 in 2021, four in 2020, and four in 2019.
Anita Johnson of the Ursa Project, a Nelson-based group promoting human-bear coexistence, told the Nelson Star in an email that there is a reason for the low numbers in 2024.
"While it's encouraging to see lower numbers of bears killed across the province last year," she said, "this was largely due to a plentiful huckleberry year that kept bears out of communities in the summer and fall."
She stressed the need for managing attractants, enforcing bylaws and using bear-resistant containers at all times, regardless of the state of the berry crop.
