In a corner of carver Richard Pollard’s workshop in the back of his Bella Coola home is a small replica of the wood-hewn memorial he is making for his brother. It is a grizzly bear holding a copper shield, a symbol of high honour.
“I wanted to make something worthy of my brother,” he said.
To the Nuxalk people, the grizzly bear is a respected creature. Mr. Pollard’s totem poles can be found throughout Nuxalk territory. The grizzly is positioned at the bottom because its strength holds the others up.
Protective tape and a warning sign blocks access near the site of the recent grizzly bear attack that injured 11 people in Bella Coola, B.C. The community is on alert as the search for the bear responsible continues.
Beyond being a horrific incident, the Nov. 20 grizzly attack on a large group of students from the Nuxalk’s school is incomprehensible for a community that has co-existed with grizzles for thousands of years.
The group of about 20 Grade 4 and 5 students had stopped for lunch in the forest during a field trip when a grizzly bear, believed to be with her two cubs, attacked. The teachers were prepared with standard-issue bear deterrents – potent pepper spray and modified shotgun shells called bear bangers, which create a startling noise and flash.
But in all, 11 people were injured. Four of them, a teacher and three young pupils, were hospitalized. Some students participated in the fight with the bear, allowing others to escape.
There is no record of an attack like this, and it is forcing the Nuxalk to rethink the way they co-exist with bears.
Living in the Bella Coola valley, Mr. Pollard has had many grizzly bear encounters. Co-existing with the bears is a way of life for the Nuxalk people.
Mr. Pollard, whose Nuxalk name is Suncwmay, has had more grizzly bear encounters than he can count. Most are peaceful, although he’s been charged while riding his bike. It has just been part of life in the valley. But the community is now on alert as the search for the bear responsible for the attack continues.
The rural school reopened on Tuesday, but with new safety rules in place. More changes will follow as the community comes to terms with a new relationship.
While grizzly viewing is a significant part of Bella Coola’s tourism economy, it is not the Nuxalk way to go looking for bears. Mr. Pollard has spent a lifetime safely navigating the outdoors among bears. Now he is nervous for his grandchildren. Yet he would not think of harming a bear: “We don’t hunt grizzlies, we don’t eat them.”
Still, the attack renewed the calls from the B.C. Wildlife Federation to reopen bear hunting. The organization claims this and other recent incidents prove that bear populations have gotten out of control since British Columbia ended the grizzly hunt in 2017. “With no hunting pressure, grizzlies and humans will increasingly occupy the same spaces with inevitable consequences,” said executive director Jesse Zeman.
Nuxalk members have not called for the destruction of the grizzly, should it be found. And conservation officers, who have set live traps, have carefully avoided saying whether the bear will be terminated.
There is a bond between these powerful apex predators and coastal First Nations in the large swath of B.C.’s central coast known as the Great Bear Rainforest.
The students from the Nuxalk’s Acwsalcta School are learning not just the regular B.C. school curriculum but about their culture and how to move in the natural world around them. Before they entered the forest, their teachers led them in a traditional prayer to announce their presence to the bears.
“All our kids are very well-versed in staying safe. Land-based healing and practices are a huge part of our community,” Kirsten Milton, primary care director and an elected Nuxalk councillor, said in an interview in the nation’s council chambers.
The incident is a reminder that to live in the Great Bear Rainforest is to accept that you live with bears. “We were in their space,” Ms. Milton said.
Acwsalcta used to conduct its outdoor education classes in a forested area adjacent to the school, in the Nuxalk community of Four Mile. But that forest is gone, cut down to make way for development. So the students and their teachers crossed Highway 20 into a wooded area, which is closer to a wildlife corridor that winds its way through the Bella Coola valley. Bears are still active even in late November, trying to fatten up before hibernation.
A B.C. conservation officer measures a footprint left in the mud during the search for the bear responsible for the attack in Bella Coola.HO/B.C. Conservation Officer Service
The Nuxalk have not responded to the attack with bloodlust but with a measured quest for answers about what went wrong.
“These are just unusual circumstances,” said Clyde Tallio, a respected knowledge-keeper in the community whose Nuxalk name is Snxakila.
“We shouldn’t go in with pitchforks and torches and demonize these creatures. We need to look at our human actions to understand why we are seeing this change in behaviour. Our history shows us this is unusual. We need to use the best knowledge and the best science to find the solutions,” he said.
Mr. Tallio was speaking not far from where the attack occurred, with snow-capped mountains towering around him in every direction. What these postcard-perfect views don’t show is that the environment that feeds people and bears alike here has been degraded as a result of logging, fishing and climate change.
British Columbia’s grizzly population is listed as a “special concern” under the federal Species at Risk Act, and their primary threat comes from habitat loss and fragmentation because of human activities like logging.
In November, bears in the upper valley are already hibernating. There is still food to be had in the lower valley, however, so the bears here are still active. And when salmon are in short supply, the human settlements along the valley bottom offer opportunity for hungry bears.
Many properties in the community are agricultural homesteads – barns still stand solidly, hand hewn from ancient timbers by Norwegian settlers a century ago. But even smaller properties offer tempting sources for food.
“Our communities need to do better at cleaning up after our waste, of not cutting down all the food sources for the bears – remember that we have lived in harmony and balance with these creatures for thousands of years,” said Mr. Tallio.
Coastal First Nations collectively banned trophy hunting of grizzly bears in the Great Bear Rainforest, on B.C.’s central coast, in 2012. The Nuxalk were instrumental in the push that led the provincial government to institute the province-wide ban in 2017, and this attack has not changed the fact that trophy hunting is an offence to their traditional laws.
Bella Coola Mountain Lodge owner Shannon Lansdowne caught a large male grizzly bear on surveillance camera roaming around the lodge property in October.
Even before this attack, interactions between people and grizzlies in the lower Bella Coola valley were on the rise this year. The Bella Coola river had an abundance of pink salmon in 2024, more than a million fish returning to the local waterways. This year, the return was just one-tenth of that, and conservation officers logged more calls about bears in the valley.
After the attack, a team from Conservation Officer Services flooded the area seeking to live-trap bears. Officers are using extraordinary measures to find the attacker. DNA samples of bear saliva have been taken from the victims’ clothing to be matched against the bears they capture. Two bears have been caught and relocated so far, though it is not yet clear whether they were involved in the attack.
Nuxalk Chief Samuel Schooner said it’s important to understand “the full circumstances of what that bear is going through,” and that is not yet clear. “Every once in a while you get a bad bear,” he said, “just like there’s some bad people out there.”
He said his community is revisiting its safety protocols. “We’ll be developing a lot of policies and procedures. I’m not saying they did anything wrong because the kids are alive – they did everything they were trained for.”
From left, Nuxalk Chief Administrative Officer Terry Webber, Nuxalk Chief Samuel Schooner, B.C. Conservation officer Sgt. Jeff Tyre and Nuxalk Councillor Elijah Mack hold a press conference following the attack.
In this small, tight-knit community, everyone has been touched by the attack. Mr. Schooner had family in the school group. Their priority is to support those who were injured, and then to figure out how to move forward. “It’s going to take time but we will be good,” Mr. Schooner said. “We’ve faced a lot of disasters, and we’re still here.”
Jason Moody, fisheries and wildlife manager with the Nuxalk Stewardship Office, is responsible for bear safety planning in the community. He was a key player in ending the trophy hunt, and has since worked with a science team to monitor bear populations and the environmental pressures they face.
His task now is to update the bear co-existence plan for the community – something that touches his family directly. On Tuesday morning, the Acwsalcta school reopened, and Mr. Moody sent his children off to class.
“We’ve worked out there with bears for over a decade. It hasn’t happened like this before. So it’s a red flag for me. My research ears go up. There are changes coming quicker than we realize, and we need to be better,” Mr. Moody said.
He said the new bear safety plans will likely address how residents in Bella Coola can reduce bear attractants, and he’d like to see buffers established around salmon-bearing streams so the animals can move through the valley without conflict.
“A lot of people have all kinds of animals and foods on their properties. In this changing climate, leaving them unattended is not an option anymore,” he said.
But his work will also likely lead to changes to the school’s outdoor ed program, which, he noted, used to have a safer forest area to explore in. “Our nation needs to plan better,” he said bluntly. “The kids still need to be able to be outside and to experience the wild. But I expect a lot of changes coming because of it.”