It’s the final straw for Bear 148. In July 2017, after an encounter with a jogger on a park trail, Bear 148 is tracked, sedated and taken by helicopter to a place far, far away. Not long after, she wanders across the border into British Columbia, where she’s killed by a hunter.

But how was that final decision made? There are rumours about who made the final call that led to Bear 148’s death. In the midst of tracking down the answer to that question, comes another: how do we undo a half-century of bear scare?

For decades people have been told bears are dangerous and only tolerable if they stay away from us.

It’s spring and as humans emerge from their winter hibernation so too will the bears.

Can we find a new way to reimagine coexistence?

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Featured in this episode:

Paul Frame, carnivore specialist, Alberta Environment and Parks

Jay Honeyman, human-wildlife conflict biologist with Alberta Environment and Parks

Kevin Van Tighem, former superintendent of Banff National Park and author of “Bears Without Fear”

Undercurrent soundtrack sponsored in part by Approach Media.

Grizzly bears are expected to navigate around all sorts of human obstacles: train tracks, roads, fences, even towns.

When they don’t, they’re considered a nuisance — to some, at least.

But for others, like filmmaker Leanne Allison, the inability to see the world from the bear’s perspective is simply a failure of the human imagination.

Allison, who made a documentary film about another Banff grizzly bear that was killed by a train, finds value in the exercise of getting in to a bear’s mindset.

“It’s nice to spend a bit of time imagining the world from an animal’s perspective because animals can’t tell their own stories,” she says.

Actively trying to understand how grizzlies move from one place to another can help minimize conflict between people and bears.

But thinking about grizzlies and how grizzlies exist upon the landscape extends well beyond the purview of filmmakers and ecologists, according to Bill Snow, consultation manager with the Stoney Nakoda Nation.

To him, grizzly bears are land guardians.

“We see them as caretakers of certain areas,” Snow says. “Traditionally their role [is] as guarding over certain areas and looking after the medicines in that area. And there’s a large spiritual and cultural component that grizzly bears have on landscapes that we understand as traditional knowledge.”

Snow said his nation’s traditional beliefs lead members of the Stoney Nakoda to operate with deep respect around grizzlies.  

“We know that there’s areas out there where they like to feed. That’s why we stay away from them … We don’t want to go charging into an area just because we want to be there and then, you know, kick everybody else out.”

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Featured in this episode:

Leanne Allison, documentary filmmaker – her project “Living With Wildlife” looks at human-bear co-existence in the Bow Valley

Jodi Hilty, Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative president and chief scientist

Bill Snow, consultation manager with the Stoney Nakoda Nation, who contributed to a cultural assessment of grizzly bears

Undercurrent soundtrack sponsored in part by Approach Media.

People have been mauled and killed by grizzly bears in the Bow Valley.

It’s something most of us don’t have to think about. But for wildlife managers in parks with bears, the worst-case-scenario is never far from mind.

Balancing the potential of that horror happening again with the behaviour of a habituated bear like 148 can feel like “playing Russian roulette,” Jay Honeyman, human-wildlife conflict biologist with Alberta Environment and Parks, says.

Do we wait until human-wildlife interactions become deadly before we intervene? Or is it reasonable to remove a peaceful bear from their habitat when the faintest warning bells begin to sound?

Honeyman said the riddle of what to do about Bear 148 wasn’t a simple one to solve.

“We haven’t found the silver bullet to figure out how to make it work with that level of habituated bear because inevitably our, our public safety radar goes off at some point and …  we can’t continue to play this game.”

But in places like Banff National Park it can be difficult for a bear to avoid habituation.

Take the example of Banff’s notorious “bear jams.”

The Bow Valley Parkway is a small, scenic road that runs parallel to the main highway between Banff and Lake Louise. Forested on both sides, the heavily trafficked parkway brings you past campgrounds and trailheads.

The beautiful drive is popular in the spring and summer — especially for tourists hoping to catch a glimpse of a wild animal.

Clearings beside the road make for popular bear grazing spots. But not all road-side stops are the same for bears.

In Banff, bears are welcome to their roadside grazing, whereas outside the park’s boundaries, bears are actively discouraged from grazing by the road with the help of rubber bullets, paintballs, beanbags and noisemakers.

Wildlife biologist Sarah Elmeligi says it’s a challenge for bears when we send them such mixed messages.

“It presents this very complex challenge to managers because on the one hand facilitating roadside bear viewing in Banff National Park is great,” she says. “It really shows people that bears are not inherently violent. It allows the bear to access really important roadside habitat, especially in the spring.”

“But on the flip side … when they leave the national parks and they engage in that same behaviour [it] can get them into pretty significant trouble.”

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Featured in this episode:

Cameron Westhead, former MLA for Banff-Cochrane

Brett Boukall, Alberta senior wildlife biologist

Bill Hunt, Banff National Park resource conservation manager

Sarah Elmeligi PhD, biologist and author of the forthcoming book “What Bears Teach Us”

Jay Honeyman, human-wildlife conflict biologist with Alberta Environment and Parks

John Borrowman, mayor of Canmore

Undercurrent soundtrack sponsored in part by Approach Media.

Kim Titchener remembers her first encounter with a grizzly bear. She’d just travelled from her home province of Ontario to Banff National Park where she had a new job as a wildlife interpreter.

“I show up my first day on the job and they’re like, ‘can you drive to Tunnel Mountain Campground? There’s a grizzly bear eating an elk carcass. Keep your truck on the side of the road. We’re going to flush her out of the campground towards you,’ ” she said.

“And I’m like, ‘what?’ ”

That was Bear 66. In the years that followed, Titchener watched Bear 66 as she grew up, eventually giving birth to three cubs.

But things didn’t go well for Bear 66.

“I got the pleasure of watching her and monitoring her for a couple of years and seeing her have beautiful little baby grizzly bear cubs. I also worked with her through the unfortunate incident of her being killed by a train.”

Her cubs didn’t fare well either. Two died from fatal car collisions. The third was captured and sent to the Saskatoon zoo.

Titchener said it’s an unfortunate reality for bears in Banff.

“There’s certainly been a lot of bears that I’ve known over the years that have moved through this valley and unfortunately, every single one of them that I’ve ever had an experience with or worked with or tried to help keep on the landscape, they’ve all died.”

The more recent death of Bear 148, who was moved from Banff National Park to an area near the border with British Columbia, raises fresh questions about an old problem: why can’t bears and people peacefully exist in large national parks?

Amid the news and disappointment and anger about Bear 148’s death, rumours and suspicion have taken root. Conspiracy theories abound about who made the final call to relocate the grizzly and why.

And yet the story behind the decision to remove Bear 148 from her range actually has a lot to do with mundane human activity in and around Banff: people choosing to walk their dogs off-leash in bear territory, ignoring park closures and generally not abiding by bear-smart rules.

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Featured in this episode:

Kim Titchener, founder of Bear Safety & More, a company that provides industry with bear safety training

Steve Michel, Parks Canada national human-wildlife conflict expert

Bill Hunt, Banff National Park resource conservation manager

Undercurrent soundtrack sponsored by Approach Media.

More than four million people visited Banff National Park between April 1, 2017, and April 1, 2018. The number of visitors to the park, one of Canada’s most popular, has been steadily growing year after year.

Some of those guests might have been lucky enough to spot a docile grizzly bear, named Bear 148, snacking on dandelions or goose eggs.

It was a part of Bear 148’s reality that during her six years of life she’d need to become accustomed to humans and their cars and cameras. Banff National Park is huge but much of its terrain is mountainous, covered up with rocks and ice.

The lush valley bottoms are where bears — and people — prefer to be.

In the summer of 2017, Bear 148 followed the valley’s ripe buffalo berries right into the town of Canmore, about 20 kilometres outside of the park.

When she crossed that park boundary, it changed everything. Wildlife managers inside the offices of Parks Canada and Alberta Environment began to think about intervening.

“She’s in the park [and] they’re protecting her,” wildlife photographer Stacy Sartoretto said.

“And then … she walks into Canmore and all of a sudden she’s public enemy number one.”

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Featured in this episode:

Stacey Sartoretto, Banff resident and founder of the Bear #148 appreciation group

Kim Titchener, founder of Bear Safety & More, a company that provides industry with bear safety training

Bill Snow, consultation manager with the Stoney Nakoda Nation

Colleen Campbell, artist

Undercurrent soundtrack sponsored in part by Approach Media.

Bear 148 lived most of her life in and near Banff, which is Canada’s busiest national park. She wasn’t afraid of people and she became a local celebrity. By the summer of 2017, wildlife managers responsible for grizzly bears around the Bow Valley were just about fed up with Bear 148. The mild-mannered grizzly had had too many encounters with people in and around Canmore and the parks.

Shot with a tranquilizer and relocated via helicopter 500 kilometres northwest, Bear 148 found herself in a new world, far from her own. That’s when she made the fatal mistake of crossing the border into British Columbia, where trophy hunting was still legal.

Bear 148 was shot and killed. The trophy hunt, the subject of fierce opposition in B.C., was suspended just two months later.

The story of Bear 148, including her relocation and death, have ignited an important debate in Alberta about how human communities interact with and live among wildlife.

Many are asking: how did it come to this? Why did Bear 148 end up in a different province, hundreds of kilometres from her home range?

Others say the grizzly got more than a fair shot to stay alive.

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Featured in this episode:

Marc Breau, Banff resident and photographer

Kevin Van Tighem, former superintendent of Banff National Park and author of “Bears Without Fear”

Undercurrent soundtrack sponsored in part by Approach Media.

When Bear 148 walked across a parking lot — which she did, often — she could easily end up on the front page of a national newspaper.

That’s because she lived in Banff, Canada’s busiest national park. But when she crossed an invisible border and left the park, she set into motion a series of events that eventually led to her death nearly 500 km from her home.

Bear 148 tells the story of the life, and death, of one bear that captivated a community. A podcast by The Narwhal coming this June.