The Conservation Officer Service has confirmed that the grizzly bear roaming Texada Island has been shot and killed, allegedly by a member of the public in the Van Anda area.
"The COS can confirm it is the tagged grizzly bear seen on Texada Island in recent weeks, and that it was shot," reads a COS social media post on Tuesday (July 15). "The bear will undergo a necropsy."
The young grizzly, nicknamed "Tex" by locals who worried about the bear's safety and were urging for it to be translocated a third time, was spotted on Texada more than a month ago after swimming over from the Powell River area.
In 2024, the bear was relocated twice. First, last September, from Gibsons, and then from Sechelt 鈥� both times to a secluded coastal area to keep it away from people. However, on both occasions, the grizzly bear made its way back to urban areas along the Sunshine Coast in just a few weeks.
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Randene Neill, Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship, said the grizzly bear's death comes as work was underway with First Nations on a new plan to attempt to translocate the bear to another remote area up the coast. However, before they could pinpoint its location, they received reports about the bear's death, she said.
"This isn鈥檛 how we wanted this to end," Neill said in a statement released Tuesday afternoon.
Since the young male grizzly bear was spotted on the small, normally bear-free island, Tex has garnered a social media following with the "Save Tex - The Texada Island Grizzly Bear" Facebook page and other social media groups that discussed bear behaviour.
A post by Island resident Ryan Michael on Facebook on Tuesday criticized how the government handled the situation.
"He paid the ultimate price for human failure. His death was entirely preventable 鈥� yet B.C. leadership chose silence over action," Michael wrote.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of the Grizzly Bear Foundation, said that while the incident is tragic, it represents an opportunity to review policies and procedures for interpreting bear behaviour and translocating bears, ensuring that the best practices for their welfare, conservation, and coexistence are used.
"Tex wasn't set up for success because the first relocations put him back where he'd come from, and if you know anything about (bear) biology, he's just going to be pushed out again," Scapillati said.
However, the fact that the province and First Nations began working together on another solution for translocating Tex could become a new model across British Columbia to create better conservation outcomes, he said.
"Indigenous culture and ethics are different from Western culture and ethics around wildlife, and we're in an ecological crisis and really need more viewpoints and ideas," he said.
In a video statement, COS Insp. Simon Gravel said when the investigation into the bear's death is complete, more information will be released.
The Mirror reached out to the Mamalilikulla First Nation but did not receive a response.
If anyone has information about the grizzly bear's killing, they are encouraged to report it to the RAPP line at 1-877-952-7277.
