Diana Wende, a campground manager at BX Park in Vernon, is still shaken over a discovery that she made while walking in the park on Saturday.
“I’m so horrified. I didn’t want to approach them alone,” Wende said.
That is because just metres away from the road, Wende found the skins of what she believes are bear cubs.
“The thing was, by the colour and by my natural assumption, it was the two young cubs that were coming through the campground,” she said.
But it was the way that they were left that has her and others uspet.
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“The way they were discarded…definitely someone had hunted them down and just left their skins,” she said.
“They have been completely skinned. All the meat and bones removed. So definitely not a road kill. Definitely not an accident,” said Paul Cousins, campground owner.
Bears can be hunted in B.C. but the fall hunting season does not start until next month. It is also illegal to hunt bears younger than two years old.
Cousins believes the bears may have been targeted for their gallbladders, which are sought after in Asia for medicinal purposes.
Officials have yet to confirm how and why the animals were killed. But according to the Wildlife Act, possessing or importing gallbladders is prohibited.
Despite the unknown, the findings have campground staff reeling.
“It hits home especially when you know the creatures that are wandering through here. We live in a beautiful spot here. We have all sorts of wild animals coming through,” Wende said.
“We don’t need this. We’re living in their environment. We need to respect them and this is not respect,” Cousins said.
Conservations officers were not available to speak on-camera but they tell CHBC News that they do not believe the bears were poached.
Cousins believes the bears are grizzly bears, also known as brown bears. The Government of Canada calls the grizzly bear a “species of special concern”.
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