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More common than you’d think.

• Sept. 16, 2009: Rory Chapple, of Fort St. John, British Columbia, saved his life by plunging an arrow into the neck of a grizzly bear after he tripped and the bear fell on top of him. The grizzly has not been found.

• Sept. 8, 2008: Reg MacDonald, a former MLA who sat for 16 years in the New Brunswick legislature, was riding his motorbike when a bear jumped on his bike and sent him flying through the air into a deep ditch. The 74-year-old was in a coma for 3 weeks after he was rescued.

• Sept. 10, 2008: A black bear swam across a river, climbed on a dock and then jumped on a boat to attack a man on Vancouver Island who was fishing at a marina. Friends and passersby came to the man’s aid and used gaffs (fishing spears), knives and a hammer to pull the bear away. The bear was finally killed with a gaff. The victim was airlifted to a Victoria hospital with cuts to his arm and upper body.

• Aug. 6, 2008: Neighbours pelted rocks at a black bear outside Coquitlam, B.C., as it attacked a screaming woman in her suburban driveway. After a three-minute struggle, the 115-kg bear went behind the house where it was later shot and killed by police officers. The woman was in stable condition with serious injuries on her arms and head and with bite marks all over her body, according to police.

• July 17, 2008: A Belgian tourist to Lake Louise was jogging alone on an abandoned railway northwest of the resort town when she surprised a black bear. Thirty minutes of terror ensued and she even “played dead” while a bear sank its teeth into her. She escaped the attack with only minor injuries.

• May 26, 2007: A 15-year-old was chasing her cat through a wooded area in the town of Georgina, Ontario when she ran into a black bear. She received only superficial scratches to her left forearm when she startled the bear. The two then ran in opposite directions.

• Sept. 2005 – A black bear killed Dr. Jacqueline Perry and wounded her husband Marc Jordan. The 30-year-old couple was attacked at Missinaibi Provincial Park, north of Chapleau, Ont. Jordan wounded the bear with a Swiss army knife while trying to free his wife. The bear was later shot and killed in a remote area of the park near where the attack occurred. This is just the fourth time since 1978 that a black bear has stalked and killed anyone in Ontario. The most recent attack took place in 1992.

• Sept. 2005 – A Manitoba man fends off a black bear in early September, just one week after a black bear killed another man in the province.

• August 26, 2005 – A 69-year-old man is fatally mauled by a black bear while out picking plums north of Winnipeg. It’s just the third time a black bear has killed a person in Manitoba’s history.

• June 2005 – There have also been four grizzly attacks in Alberta since June, including a fatal one on a female jogger near Canmore. Jogger Isabelle Dube, 35, a competitive mountain biker originally from Quebec, was married and had a young daughter. She was the first person killed by a bear in Alberta since 1998. Since 1992, there have been two deaths and 23 maulings by bears in Alberta.

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The term “Killer Whale” isn’t a cute nickname. This is terrifying. I don’t understand how this particular whale has continued to participate in shows – this is the third human it has killed. And, don’t I remember children sometimes standing poolside as these whales swim below? How is that ever safe? I understand that the whale may have had no predatory intent – but rather playfulness – but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous, or the trainer any less dead.

Whale kills trainer as horrified spectators watch
By MIKE SCHNEIDER
The Associated Press
Wednesday, February 24, 2010; 9:46 PM

ORLANDO, Fla. — A SeaWorld killer whale snatched a trainer off a poolside platform in its jaws Wednesday and thrashed the woman around underwater, killing her in front of a horrified audience. It marked the third time the animal had been involved in a human death.

Distraught audience members were hustled out of the stadium immediately, and the park was closed.

Trainer Dawn Brancheau, 40, was one of the park’s most experienced. Her sister said Brancheau wouldn’t want anything done to the whale that killed her because she loved the animals like children.

Brancheau was rubbing Tilikum after a noontime show when the 12,000-pound whale grabbed her and pulled her in, said Chuck Tompkins, head of animal training at all SeaWorld parks. It was not clear if she drowned or died from the thrashing.

Because of his size and the previous deaths, trainers were not supposed to get into the water with Tilikum, and only about a dozen of the park’s 29 trainers worked with him. Brancheau had more experience with the 30-year-old whale than most.

“We recognized he was different,” Tompkins said. He said no decision has been made yet about what will happen to Tilikum, such as transfering him to another facility.

A retired couple from Michigan told The Associated Press that they were some stragglers in the audience who had stayed to watch the animals and trainers.

Eldon Skaggs, 72, saw Brancheau on platform massaging the whale. He said the interaction appeared leisurely and informal. Skaggs that the whale “pulled her under and started swimming around with her.”

Skaggs said an alarm sounded and staff rushed the audience out of the stadium as workers scrambled around with nets.

Skaggs said he heard that during an earlier show the whale was not responding to directions. Others who attended the earlier show said the whale was behaving like an ornery child.

The couple left and didn’t find out until later that the trainer had died.

“We were just a little bit stunned,” said Skaggs’ wife, Sue Nichols, 67.

Another audience member, Victoria Biniak, told WKMG-TV the whale “took off really fast in the tank, and then he came back, shot up in the air, grabbed the trainer by the waist and started thrashing around, and one of her shoes flew off.”

Two other witnesses told the Orlando Sentinel that the whale grabbed the woman by the upper arm and tossed her around in its mouth while swimming rapidly around the tank. Brazilian tourist Joao Lucio DeCosta Sobrinho and his girlfriend were at an underwater viewing area when they suddenly saw a whale with a person in its mouth.

The couple said they watched the whale show at the park two days earlier and came back to take pictures. But on Wednesday the whales appeared agitated.

“It was terrible. It’s very difficult to see the image,” Sobrinho said.

A SeaWorld spokesman said Tilikum was one of three orcas blamed for killing a trainer in 1991 after the woman lost her balance and fell in the pool at Sealand of the Pacific near Victoria, British Columbia.

Steve Huxter, who was head of Sealand’s animal care and training department then, said Wednesday he’s surprised it happened again. He says Tilikum was a well-behaved, balanced animal.

Tilikum was also involved in a 1999 death, when the body of a man who had sneaked by SeaWorld security was found draped over him. The man either jumped, fell or was pulled into the frigid water and died of hypothermia, though he was also bruised and scratched by Tilikum.

At the stadium, what appeared to be a body covered with a black shroud could be seen lying on the concrete near the water as the animals swam just a few feet away.

Later Wednesday, SeaWorld in San Diego also suspended its killer whale show. It was not clear if the killer whale show has been suspended at SeaWorld’s San Antonio location, which is closed until the weekend.

According to a profile of Brancheau in the Sentinel in 2006, she was one of SeaWorld Orlando’s leading trainers. It was apparently a trip to SeaWorld at age 9 that made her want to follow that career path.

“I remember walking down the aisle (of Shamu Stadium) and telling my mom, ‘This is what I want to do,’” she said in the article.

Brancheau worked her way into a leadership role at Shamu Stadium during her career with SeaWorld, starting at the Sea Lion & Otter Stadium before spending 10 years working with killer whales, the newspaper said.

She also addressed the dangers of the job.

“You can’t put yourself in the water unless you trust them and they trust you,” Brancheau said.

Steve McCulloch, founder and program manager at the Marine Mammal Research and Conservation Program at Harbor Branch/Florida Atlantic University, said the whale may have been playing, but it is too early to tell.

“I wouldn’t jump to conclusions,” he said. “These are very large powerful marine mammals. They exhibit this type of behavior in the wild.

“Nobody cares more about the animal than the trainer. It’s just hard to fathom that this has happened.”

Brancheau’s older sister Diane Gross, of Indiana, said the trainer “would not want anything done to that whale.” Gross said her sister loved working at the park and thought of the animals like she would her own children.

Gross tells the Associated Press that news of her sister’s death “hasn’t sunk in yet.”

Mike Wald, a spokesman for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration office in Atlanta, said his agency had dispatched an investigator from Tampa.

Wednesday’s death was not the first attack on whale trainers at SeaWorld parks.

In November 2006, a trainer was bitten and held underwater several times by a killer whale during a show at SeaWorld’s San Diego park.

The trainer, Kenneth Peters, escaped with a broken foot. The 17-foot orca that attacked him was the dominant female of SeaWorld San Diego’s seven killer whales. She had attacked Peters two other times, in 1993 and 1999.

In 2004, another whale at the company’s San Antonio park tried to hit one of the trainers and attempted to bite him. He also escaped.

Wednesday’s attack was the second time in two months that an orca trainer was killed at a marine park. On Dec. 24, 29-year-old Alexis Martinez Hernandez fell from a whale and crushed his ribcage at Loro Parque on the Spanish island of Tenerife. Park officials said the whale, a 14-year-old named Keto, made an unusual move as the two practiced a trick in which the whale lifts the trainer and leaps into the air.

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Nursing bite wounds inflicted by a grizzly bear, two B.C. hunters are thankful to have survived a harrowing attack inside their tent.

Jeff Hebert and Ken Scown, both of Nelson, B.C., were camping overnight Wednesday in the East Kootenays when the grizzly bear attacked about 10:20 p.m.

Scown, 36, was asleep but Hebert, 32, was reading and heard the bear charge their tent.

“There was no warning, there was no other sound other than the sound of something very heavy running towards the tent and huffing — just a deep, guttural huff and it was getting closer very fast,” said Hebert.

He woke Scown and grabbed his rifle beside him, which didn’t have a round in the chamber as a safety precaution.

“She came so fast I didn’t even have time to cycle the bolt — she hit us in the tent and collapsed the tent over top of us and started mauling my partner,” said Hebert.

“She was just trashing and tossing us both around.”

The grizzly mauled the men from outside the tent and they couldn’t see the animal, but the tracks in the snow later proved it was a bear.

“It was absolutely terrifying — pretty much every tenter’s worst nightmare to get attacked in your tent at night,” said Scown, a forester.

While the bear mauled Scown, Hebert used his right hand to prepare his rifle to fire and attempted to push the grizzly off his friend with his left hand.

“That’s when she turned and bit me in the arm,” he said, adding he then stuck the gun underneath the bear and pulled the trigger, but it didn’t fire because the round wasn’t properly in the chamber.

After attacking the pair for about a minute, the bear gave up and wandered away.

“Thank God, I guess we fought back hard enough that she decided we weren’t an easy meal and left,” said Hebert, nursing a pair of two-inch deep bite wounds to his left forearm.

Scown had been wearing more layers and amazingly suffered only three puncture wounds that aren’t as deep.

They hiked 5 km to their truck and drove 1 1/2 hours to Cranbrook Hospital for treatment.

The experienced outdoorsmen both intend to continue hunting.

Scown said he disagrees with the decision of local conservation officers, who ruled the bear wasn’t behaving in a predatory manner and shouldn’t be tracked and killed.

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Conservation officials in B.C.’s central Interior are praising a mother who saved her young son from a cougar attack in a popular hiking area.

At approximately 4 p.m. Saturday, a mother and her two children were enjoying an afternoon hike near Pinnacles Provincial Park, just outside the city of Quesnel.

Officials say the cougar pounced suddenly on a seven-year-old boy, who was walking just ahead of his mother and little brother.

“He turned to look back at his mother and the cougar jumped on his back [and] knocked him to the ground,” said conservation officer Mike Krause.

“[The] mother, of course, immediately rushed in. The cougar saw the mother coming and immediately broke off the attack and … ran off.”

Another hiker stepped in and helped the family get away.

The little boy needed stitches for scratches to his cheek, ear and back, Krause said, adding, “Anybody that gets attacked by a cougar is lucky to come away with minor injuries.”

Rare incident

The park, approximately 120 kilometres south of Prince George, remained closed Wednesday while officials worked to track and capture the animal with snares and traps.

The attack and response happened so quickly, Krause said, the mother wasn’t able to give any details about the cougar, such as size or age.

Krause said officials don’t know why this cougar attacked, but they are praising the mother of the victim.

“She did what mothers will do and that’s protect their children … without hesitation,” Krause said.

Cougars are common in the area, he said, but attacks are rare.

“Particularly in the Quesnel area, this is the first recorded cougar attack on a human. It’s very rare.”

The family has asked that their name not be released.

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Conservation officers are warning British Columbians of the dangers of feeding wildlife following an attack on a Lower Mainland toddler by a coyote that had lost its fear of humans.

The girl, 2, suffered bites to the head and ear and minor scratches to her back during Monday’s attack at a playground in a Port Coquitlam school yard, before her parents were able to scare the animal away.

Provincial conservation officer Terry Myroniuk said agents later tracked and killed the animal. The contents of its stomach — chicken and mashed potatoes — confirmed it had been getting fed.

“What typically will happen is the animals will quite often lose their fear of humans and… approach humans in seeking out food — and this can sometimes result in unfortunate incidents,” Myroniuk said.

Feeding wild animals is an offence under the provincial Wildlife Act, Myroniuk pointed out, and the law is there for a reason.

“People who feed wildlife intend to help, but the practice instead puts the animals and the public in danger,” Myroniuk said.

“It’s not unusual for us to have coyotes existing in the Lower Mainland. But the behaviour that was exhibited by this animal — again, the lack of fear of humans, the lack of fear in actually approaching humans — is an indication that it had certainly been fed.”

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Officials advise caution in wake of rattlesnake bites

Health authorities in the sun-baked Interior are advising caution after three incidents of rattlesnake bites near Penticton in the last month.

Last week an Okanagan man was bitten on the ankle after stepping on a rattler in his backyard. After four days in intensive care and 40 vials of anti-venom, costing $1,000 each, his condition has stabilized.

Another person was bitten on the hand while out on a trail, and the other was bitten on the finger in a backyard.

On average there are five rattlesnake bites a year in B.C., and there have been two deaths in the province’s recorded history.

Rattlers reside on grassy hillsides in territory ranging from the southern Okanagan to the northern outskirts of Kamloops, and have come into increasing contact with humans owing to residential development.

Here are some tips from Interior doctors familiar with rattlesnake bites:

Keep in mind that the striking distance of a snake is about two-thirds its length. Do not pick up or handle snakes. Even a dead snake can bite and release venom through reflexes for 90 minutes after it dies.

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Mom pulls three-year-old daughter from cougar’s grasp in Squamish

BY REBECCA TEBRAKE AND DARAH HANSEN, VANCOUVER SUNJUNE 17, 2009 9:08 PM

METRO VANCOUVER — When Maureen Lee took her three-year-old daughter Maya salmonberry-picking along the Squamish River, she thought it would be a peaceful break from a day of packing for her family’s move to Mexico this weekend.

They were on a trail in Fisherman’s Park — about five minutes from their home in Squamish’s Brackendale neighbourhood — when Lee noticed movement in the bushes.

She thought it was a dog, but quickly realized it was a cougar.

The cat jumped onto Maya, pinned her in a fetal position and gripped her head with its claws, Lee said Wednesday, recounting the Tuesday evening attack.

“I just knew I had to get between them.”

Lee somehow wedged her slight frame between her daughter and the 80-pound male cougar, pushing him off Maya as she stood up. She grabbed Maya and ran.

“It was pure adrenalin and instinct,” Lee said. “I don’t think it was until I started running that the fear kicked in.”

As they ran, Maya, bleeding from her head and arm, kept repeating, “A bear got me. A bear got me.”

Lee didn’t turn back until she reached the safety of her neighbour’s house, who helped her stop Maya’s bleeding.

“Amazing,” Maya’s father, Pablo Espinosa, said of his wife’s actions. “I don’t know what I would have done.”

An ambulance took Maya to Squamish General Hospital where cuts on the right side of her head and her upper left arm were stitched up.

She appeared in good spirits Wednesday, even asking her mom to take her back down to the site of the attack.

“She’s very brave, but I can tell she was a bit shaken,” Lee said of Maya’s reaction to the visit. “I don’t want her to be afraid of the forest. I don’t want her to be afraid of picking berries. I want her to understand that this was a unique situation.”

The cougar drama will not change the family’s plans to relocate to Mexico on the weekend, she said.

Around 10 p.m. Tuesday, five conservation officers aided by five dogs found and killed the 18-month-old adult male cat that is suspected in the attack.

Squamish conservation officer Chris Doyle said from the animal’s outward appearance it appeared to be in good condition. However, a full necropsy has been ordered to help determine why the animal acted as it did.

Conservation officers continued to scout the neighbourhood with dog teams on Wednesday.

B.C. is home to about 4,000 to 6,000 cougars, but sightings of the elusive wild cat are “really, really unusual,” said Kyle Knopff, a PhD student at the University of Alberta who studies cougar behaviour. “In general they avoid people,” he said.

But Squamish has recently recorded an alarming spike in the number of encounters. In the past week and a half, Doyle said, 30 cougar sightings have been reported in the district, up from an average of two sightings over such a period.

Two dogs were attacked in separate incidents along the popular Chief Trail earlier this month. One of the dogs was killed when the cougar dragged it from its leash and carried it up a tree. The second dog was rescued by its owner.

In that case, conservation officers shot and killed a young female cougar, also about a year to 18 months old.

According to Doyle, that animal was in very poor health.

“It appeared she hadn’t fed for a while,” he said.

It’s not unusual for conservation officers to kill a cougar if the animal’s behaviour is deemed significantly abnormal or if the encounters reach a “high level of conflict,” Doyle said.

“If they are not in conflict, they are fairly secretive,” he added.

The high number of sightings has raised concern among Squamish residents, who’ve been told to stay alert on wooded trails and paths, and use particular caution when out with young children and pets.

Lee said she had heard about the cougar attacks on dogs and her mom had called her Tuesday morning to warn her — a warning that came back to haunt her as she ran to safety cradling Maya in her arms.

“As I was running, I thought of that. My mom’s going to kill me,” Lee said.

Neighbour Kelsey Wright said residents were walking around carrying cans and sticks to make noise with after the attack Tuesday night.

“It definitely makes you feel a little uneasy, but you can’t live your life in fear because of a cougar attack,” Wright said.

Kris Mazzotti, who lives a few doors down from Lee and Espinosa, taught her four-year-old son Joel what a cougar is and how to act if he sees one.

Mazzotti told Joel to be calm and not to run away, but she admits she would probably pick up her kids and run.

Some residents blame Olympics-related residential development in the area for the recent cougar problems.

“What is happening here was so predictable,” said Brian Vincent, a Squamish resident and communications director for an Oregon-based wildlife advocacy group, Big Wildlife.

“This was a sleepy little town for the longest time and didn’t have this problem. But because of the Olympics and all the construction for the Sea to Sky Highway and the rampant and uncontrolled housing development into wildlife habitat, these animals have become stressed,” he said.

Vincent urged local authorities and residents to avoid whipping up hysteria about the big cats.

However, Doyle said there are a number of reasons for the increase in cougar sightings, none of which have to do with development.

He said the cougars may be reacting to variations in the location and abundance of prey species, or it might be simple population dynamics.

The sightings and attacks may also be the result of young cougars leaving their mothers, he said.

He noted the recent sightings have all occurred in established residential or recreational areas, not in newly developed areas.

Knopff speculated that the two cougars that were killed were possibly siblings who came into the town limits in search of easy food. Young cougars, he said, “are definitely less effective predators. There is a learning curve, for sure.”

Knopff said spotting a cougar in its natural habitat is not cause for alarm, even if the animal is seen repeatedly.

However, a cougar that repeatedly approaches people in a threatening way, attacks pets while people are present, or attacks people is “certainly a problem.” “Such cougars must be dealt with,” he said.

According to Knopff, if you are attacked by a cougar, the best way to deter the animal is to aggressively fight back.

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Girl attacked by cougar in Brackendale, B.C.

Source: CBC News

Posted: 06/16/09 10:40PM

Filed Under: Canada

A three-year-old girl was attacked by a cougar in Brackendale, a community in the northern part of Squamish, B.C., early Tuesday evening.

Squamish is 60 kilometres north of Vancouver.

A helicopter evacuation to a Vancouver hospital was initiated, but later it was decided her injuries could be treated at the local hospital in Squamish.

RCMP Cpl. Dave Ritchie said the girl, who was attacked in Fisherman’s Park at 7 p.m. PT., is expected to recover.

The attack comes after conservation officers in the Squamish area warned hikers to keep an eye out for the large cats.

There were six attacks last Friday alone, including two on dogs. One dog was killed by a cougar, which was later destroyed by conservation officers.

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B.C. man fends off cougar attack near ski resort

 

By TORBEN ROLFSEN 05-13-2009 COMMENTS(0) LIVE@FIVE

 

Filed under: cougar attack

A 21-year-old man hitchhiking near the Kamloops-area Sun Peaks ski resort was jumped from behind while attempting to run away from a hungry cougar.

He escaped by beating the animal’s head with rocks before being taken to Royal Inland Hospital and then released after reportedly experiencing nothing worse than some minor neck pain.

Bad timing for the resort coming right after the end of ski season; not exactly the kind of off-season activities your marketing department wants to work with.

New slogan? “At least there’s no Swine Flu!”

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BC hero dog inducted to animal hall of fame

Jarod saved woman from bear attack

Sonia Aslam | Monday, May 4th, 2009 11:02 am

 

Jarod and Donna (Courtesy Purina Animal Hall of Fame)

GENELLE (NEWS1130) - One of British Columbia’s most unique heroes is being honoured in Toronto today.  This hero saved a woman’s life during a bear attack last fall.  The hero: a family dog!  And ‘Jarod’, an 8-year-old Chow from Genelle, is being inducted into the Purina Animal Hall of Fame.

Jarod’s owner Donna Perreault says the dog saved her life–and the life of her other Chow ‘Meesha’ from a bear attack.  “Jarod came bolting out the door and started attacking the bear from the back.  The bear had me backed up against the garage door.  Jarod was still attacking him, but then he really bit into him, and the bear turned.”

Jarod then acted as a decoy by running behind the garage. The bear took the bait and followed Jarod, giving Donna and Meesha time to safely return inside the house. Finally Jarod managed to safely get away from the bear.

Perreault says Jarod is her little blessing.  She rescued him from a shelter when he was 6-years-old.

Jarod is one of three dogs, and one cat being inducted today.