Grim findings for B.C. grizzly bears in East Kootenay valley

Highways aren’t the only place in B.C. where vehicles can tragically interact with the province’s wildlife.

In the East Kootenay region, a female grizzly bear and her two cubs died recently after being hit by a train along a near low-lying train bridge.

Tragically, a study from a UBC Okanagan graduate says the Elk Valley is proving to be a deadly area for B.C. grizzlies.

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“We collared 76 grizzly bears and basically followed them for seven years to see what life and death looked like for them,” said Clayton Lamb, a wildlife scientist.

What Lamb and his colleagues from UBC found was an extremely grim existence for many sub-adult grizzly bears (two- to six-years-old) in the province’s Elk Valley region.

“They had some of the highest mortality rates in North America,” said Lamb, “so survival rates were very, very poor for some of those animals.”

Of the 22 bears that died during the study, 14 were fitted with tracking collars, allowing researchers to determine a cause of death.

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Lamb said the main two causes of death were highway collisions and railway collisions.

“The key collision spots are along curves, where the bush is thick and especially where the river pinches against the tracks,” said Lamb, “and you can’t escape off one side.”

Lamb says when you add in a grizzly’s fight-or-flight response, it can often put them on the wrong side of the tracks.

“And they will run away from the train until they get tired, and then they will turn and face the train.”

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Lamb is hoping that the study’s findings, recently published online, will help save juvenile grizzlies in the Elk Valley by installing fencing and wildlife corridors to reduce human-bear conflicts

“On the railway front, there is some promise on early warning detection systems,” said Lamb.

The systems could include a buzzer that would go off a few seconds before a train arrives, thus alerting animals.

The paper’s findings have determined that Elk Valley can and does sustain a high population of the province’s apex predator despite having an extremely high human population relative to other grizzly bear habitats.

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