Two bears put down in area where man died in bear attack last week (Update)

(Photo retrieved from Pixabay).

A spokesperson from the NWT Department of Environment and Natural Resources says a grizzly bear and a black bear have both been killed near where a man was killed in a bear attack last Thursday, not far from the Sahtu community of Tulita.

Meanwhile, the NWT Chief Coroner says the victim’s identity has not yet been officially confirmed.

She says his remains have been sent to Edmonton for a post mortem.

CKLB extends condolences to the man’s family and friends and also acknowledges the difficult task done by searchers who found the man’s body Friday afternoon.

CKLB learned what had happened mere hours after the bear attack early Thursday morning due to a connection to a female canoeist who first found a distraught woman on the shoreline of the Mackenzie River, about 50 kilometres south of Tulita.

That frantic woman told the canoeist that her partner had just been dragged into the woods by a grizzly bear.

The canoeist, who’s from B.C., then helped initiate a SPOT emergency locating device and RCMP were notified of the bear attack in the extremely remote area.

The rescuer had been paddling on the river with her husband, their two kids and two other men when they came upon the distraught woman on the bank of the river in the early morning hours.

Fatal grizzly bear attacks in the NWT are relatively rare with this being only the second on record in at least the past seven years.

About the Author

John McFadden
John has been in the broadcast journalism industry since the 1980s. He has been a reporter in Yellowknife since 2012 and joined CKLB in January of 2018. John covers the crime and court beat as well as reporting on other areas including politics, business, entertainment and sports. He won seven national community newspaper awards while he was a journalist with Northern News Services Limited (NNSL). John worked in Ontario before coming North including stints as a TV sportscaster in Peterborough and senior news writer for CBC and CTV in downtown Toronto.