Sentence delayed again for "bear dude"

By Mona Mattei

A day in court for the man who pled guilty for feeding 24 black bears in Christina Lake gave no satisfaction for either party in the matter yesterday as the final decision was delayed.

 

In yesterday’s sentencing hearing crown counsel Joel Gold had two witnesses tell Grand Forks provincial circuit court Judge Rob Fabbro that the community of Christina Lake lived with an extremely dangerous situation throughout 2011 as the impact of the 10 to 15 years that Allen Piche fed bears played out. In the end 18 bears were killed, and the conservation officer dealt with 256 complaints with 100 in the month of August alone.

 

“(Piche) accepts that it may not have been wise, but is not taking responsibility for deaths,” said Gold. “He has a misguided philosophy in experimentation with bears. All evidence from credible sources…indicates that feeding is a significant problem.”

 

Allen Piche, a 66-year-old Fife area resident, was charged with feeding dangerous wildlife in 2010 when human fed habituated bears were discovered on his property when RCMP conducted a search for a marijuana grow operation.

 

He pled guilty to the charges and agreed to stop feeding under order from the Ministry of Environment’s conservation office. He recently was charged again with the same offence as a result of a covert investigation conducted between June and October 2011, and again pled guilty. Under the act, Piche could face a maximum penalty of $100,000 in fines and a year in jail, but for the second offence it could be double.

 

Grand Forks conservation officer, Dave Webster and Mike Badry, biologist for the Ministry of Environment based in Victoria, both said that they wanted to save as many bears as they could, but in the end the safety of the community was foremost in their decisions in 2010 when the ministry created a plan for the situation. They estimated that their plan, which included evaluation of the problem, initiating a bear aware program for the area, killing bears and responding to complaints cost the province about $75,000.

 

Webster described incidents of severe property damage, 911 calls from campers, and 17 vehicles were broken into. “In one incident alone a bear was trapped inside a van on West Lake Drive,” said Webster. “There was $50 – 60,000 in damages to vehicles…that I’ve never seen before.”

 

Badry, whose expert testimony was challenged by defense attorney Jessie Gelber, talked about his impression of the situation and the management techniques used in this “unprecedented situation. I’ve never had to work on an issue of this nature.”

 

He remained clear that right from the beginning they had little hope for the bears’ ability to return to forage on their own, as it was “very unlikely to turn that behaviour around.”

 

Gelber suggested that the situation could have been mitigated if the ministry had chosen a different approach by feeding the bears with a diversionary program similar to one used by Dr. Lynn Rogers in Minnesota, adding that the plan used “chose a high level of conflict with humans” rather than having the bears fend for themselves in a reduced feeding program over a series of years.

 

Badry disagreed, indicating that feeding stations only prolong the problem and could create more habituated bears down the road, but did agree that the feeding could have mitigated the situation by tapering the impact over a couple of years. The ministry ruled out the option. “We didn’t consider it an effective way to deal with the problem,” Badry added.

 

Both Webster and Badry agreed that they did not tag or attempt to identify the bears that were part of the group last year, so could not definitively say that the dead bears were from the Fife group, although Webster noted that their degree of human habituation was evident.

Final submissions in the case will be made in writing by Jan. 17 as court wound down for the day. Judge Fabbro indicated he did not know when he will arrive at a decision. Piche did not take the stand.