Re: the recently rescued bear cubs.
When I met Conservation Officer Bryce Casavant he seemed a really great guy, stressed out and tired but smart and quite brave. He put his job on the line to protect these totally innocent bears.
The native owner of the property where the mother got into trouble quite liked her, was calling her Yogi and was very sad when a decision was made to destroy her. The cubs came out of the woods to look for her and ran up a tree where Casavant and the firemen captured them. They were never in the house.
Casavant wrote a careful and articulate series of e-mails to a sergeant in Campbell River and in response received a number of terse, rude demands to kill the cubs immediately, by someone who knew absolutely nothing about the circumstances.
Casavant refused to do so, hid them away and called NIWRA. Now they are safe and we do hope to keep them that way until they can be released into the wild.
There is something insidious about the whole episode. Some people suspect it’s part of the continued process of gutting the entire ministry, which is already underfunded and understaffed to the detriment of all of us. Victoria has been very quiet. We need to increase the pressure until this gets resolved fairly.
Dave EricksonParksville