The first time she touched a grizzly bear, she was just two months old.
From then on, Michelle McLellan has spent her life tracking, studying and researching grizzly bears.
"I grew up on a research program in southern B.C. in the Rocky Mountains, where my dad studied grizzly bears for 40 years,” she said.
Her childhood is filled with memories of grizzlies, including the first one she touched.
"It was immobilized … my parents weren't that crazy,” McLellan told Lodestar Media.
The wildlife ecologist believes a recent sighting of two grizzly cubs on Vancouver Island and a grizzly that swam to Texada Island are signs of population expansion. Her work has focused on recovering populations.
She said the Sunshine Coast is an area where bears were persecuted for a long time. They were no longer hunted after the 1970s.
“It's been about 50 years, so we can expect some of them to show up a bit more,” she said.
A grizzly bear that swam from Powell River to Texada Island has been spotted by some locals, prompting conservation officers to go to the island to monitor the situation.
The adult male grizzly — known as Tex — has a yellow ear tag and was first spotted in Shehtekwahn Bay, across from Powell River, on May 25. Bears are tagged for research purposes.
A small group of people living on Texada Island are trying to privately relocate him but conservation officers say the plan is not sanctioned by them or the province.
In an emailed statement earlier this week, the Ministry of Environment and Parks said it is aware of the relocation plan.
"Due to recent conflict history, the grizzly bear poses a serious threat to public safety and Human-Wildlife Conflict Response Guidelines will be followed,” the statement read, noting Tex was relocated twice in 2024.
The ministry added conservation officers and provincial wildlife biologists have worked together throughout the conflict history of this bear.
Meanwhile, on May 17, a woman spotted two grizzly cubs playing past Campbell River. Callie Boyle and her mother were driving on a logging road when they saw a large grizzly bear and two cubs in an estuary.
"We just watched them tackle each other and just wrestle on the ground,” she said. “It was really cool to see.”
For McLellan, this sighting is unique because for a long time bear biologists did not believe there were grizzly bear populations on Vancouver Island.
“It's females with cubs, which would indicate an actual occupancy of the species,” she said. "This is a population that's there and that is interesting."
She said there's an opportunity to understand how the population is changing and how the species is shifting.
"This is new, that these bears have come here,” said McLellan. “This isn’t just people noticing grizzly bears. This is bears coming from the mainland and dispersing there.”
How to avoid a grizzly bear encounter
In all the years McLellan's been studying bears, grizzly bears seldom get in "nasty" encounters with people in human-dominated landscapes.
“It’s much more rare, it’s very rare.”
If close enough, grizzly bears will often try to smell people.
“They’ll wave their head around and stand on their hind legs and that isn’t to be aggressive,” she explained. “That’s them trying to figure out what you are and what the appropriate way to respond is.”
To avoid a grizzly bear encounter, don't forget to make noise.
"They'll hear you," she said.
A grizzly also might have its eyes "locked in" on a person, trying to figure out how to get around them.
If you’re in a wide-open area, where they like to spend time, back away slowly.
How is the grizzly bear population doing?
McLellan said people have worked very hard to conserve the grizzly bear populations.
“A lot of the populations, like Squamish-Lillooet is recovering, the South Chilcotin mountain ranges are recovering, the Selkirk Mountains that I live in, a lot of these populations are doing better than they once did, but not all of them,” she said.
She told Lodestar Media there is a way to recover the populations, but it requires the understanding that not all places are the same.
“They face different challenges.”
McLellan is quick to add that people all over B.C.’s Interior are co-existing with grizzly bears.
"If they remove one, chances are there's going to be another one,” she said.
She hopes people will look into available resources and information to feel safe if a grizzly bear is living nearby.
Expect to see more grizzly bears
Garth Mowat, a large carnivore specialist with B.C.'s Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship, has been working with grizzly bears since 1996.
He said the population is expanding in parts of the province and people will see bears in places they are not used to.
“It's often alarming when that happens,” he said.
In places like Naramata, Powell River and Vancouver Island, populations are slowly coming back.
“On Vancouver Island, there were no female bears for a long time,” said Mowat. "So these male bears show up and disappear on the edges of the range for years and even decades, as they're slowly colonizing or waiting for females to colonize that part of the range.”
The first places grizzly bears were recovering used to be in the wilderness.
“It wasn’t that noticeable,” said Mowat. “We didn’t see the conflicts that we are seeing now.”
Grizzly bears are slowly recolonizing all the areas they were extricated from, he added.
“That's going to be a challenge for us in British Columbia in the future, is they're everywhere, they will start to be everywhere. And how do we manage that?”
Like McLellan, he said co-existing is possible.
"It's done all over the place, in the province, and in North America and in Asia and Europe,” said Mowat. “We may have to change our behaviour a little bit, but don't panic and don't exaggerate the threat."
What kind of terrain does a grizzly bear prefer?
From a biological sense, grizzly bears have evolved from the open steps of Asia.
"They did not evolve where there were trees. That's why they're not good climbers. Their shoulders are rotated and attached and built for digging," Mowat said.
These bears thrived in environments where a significant portion of their energy source was stored underground in roots and bulbs. This led them to become highly efficient at digging these up.
“You will tend to see grizzly bears in the open parts of the ecosystem,” said Mowat.
This includes the mouths of rivers, on big sedge flats in cut blocks, in the alpine and sub-alpine areas, and on the salmon streams.
Grizzlies are not black bears
When it comes to explaining the species, McLellan hopes the public understands that grizzly bears are a different species than black bears.
“They have evolved to behave differently. The way that they respond to humans is often different, and it can be unsettling,” she said.
Grizzly bears will not climb a tree or run away. It is not within their nature to be afraid of people.
It’s imperative to make your presence known to the bear so they know how to respond. If you are a large distance away, they'll usually just leave.
Secure any attractants
It's extremely important to keep dogs on a leash around a grizzly because they will likely respond more aggressively to your four-legged companion, according to McLellan.
It also doesn't hurt to carry bear spray, she said, if out walking around an area the bear has been spotted.
People should also secure all attractants such as fruit trees, fishing gear and anything that smells like food. Chickens and farm animals should also be secured by putting up an electric fence.
"You don't want them in your yard. That'll lead to the death of the bear, or destruction of your property, or worse,” she said.
