Conservation service investigates Smithers tourist for feeding grizzly<\/p>\n
Published 3:37 pm Tuesday, May 19, 2026<\/p>\n
A video is making its rounds on social media of what appears to be a tourist feeding a grizzly bear near Smithers.<\/p>\n
There are several short clips of a man, who also flashes his boarding pass in one scene, allegedly feeding a carrot from a vehicle and then it appears he gets out and tries to feed the grizzly an apple.<\/p>\n
Sergeant Matthew Corbett of the Conservation Officer Service said he can\u2019t speak to the incident beyond the fact that they are aware and there is an open investigation.<\/p>\n
He did add that feeding a grizzly is an offence under the wildlife act.<\/p>\n
The penalties for this sort of offence range from a violation ticket of $575 to a maximum fine of $50,000.<\/p>\n
There are very good reasons for it being highly illegal to feed bears beyond the fact it is exceptionally dangerous to a person\u2019s own safety.<\/p>\n
It also endangers other people, because a bear that becomes habituated to humans can become even more aggressive and pose a threat to others. Conservation officers often end up having to euthanize such bears.<\/p>\n
It can also be dangerous to bears\u2019 health because human foods do not provide proper nutrition and can cause health issues.<\/p>\n
In 2018, a B.C. woman was fined $60,000 for habitually feeding black bears on her property near Whistler. She was later able to appeal the amount as excessive, but still ended up having to shell out $10,500 in a reduced fine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Conservation service investigates Smithers tourist for feeding grizzly Published 3:37 pm Tuesday, May 19, 2026 A video is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[244562,49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-683694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-bc-north","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}