Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

FORT SIMPSON (July 16/99) - An adult black bear was shot last Tuesday night in Fort Simpson -- the second in as many weeks.

The bear was spotted near the papal site and reported to local RCMP, who notified Renewable Resources officer Ken Davidge.

Davidge and RCMP Cpl. Steve Corcoran tracked the bear to the bank of the Mackenzie River, where Davidge fired five times to bring the bear down.

Firing through the thick brush, it was hard for him to get a clear shot at the bear, but Davidge made sure the bear did not suffer.

Cpl. Corcoran said the detachment had received a number of calls over the past couple of weeks about the wandering bear.

"We had four or five different people call from the neighbourhood near the Pentecostal Church," Cpl. Corcoran said. "One of the people saw the bear walk right through town coming from the direction of the campground.

"In the week previous to this, we'd had two or three calls about a bear seen in different parts of town, but we could never find it," he said. "We're speculating that this bear was that bear we had the calls on, because since that time we haven't had any other bear calls."

On June 22, Davidge was forced to shoot a 127-kilogram bear that had wandered into a residential area of town.

Late last week, a Nova Scotia woman was mauled by a black bear in Dawson City, Yukon. She remains in a Vancouver hospital and is listed as critical. Another incident near Rankin Inlet involving a polar bear left one person dead and two injured.

A family camped about 48 kilometres outside of Rankin Inlet was attacked by a polar bear. A 64-year-old woman was mauled to death when she tried to stop the attack of the bear on a young boy and a 66-year-old man. The bear was later found and destroyed. The Dawson City black bear remains at large.

While RWED officials say there is no connection or trend to these three incidents, they are urging the public to use extreme caution around bears. Any urban sightings of bears should be reported to police or wildlife officials.