Living with Wildlife in Manitoba

Predatory Behaviour in Black Bear

Despite many bear-human encounters, bear attacks are infrequent, and cases of bear-inflicted deaths are even more rare. Stephen Herrero, author of Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance, has documented 54 fatal maulings in North America between 1900 and 2003 with over half of the fatalities occurring since 1980, including eight this century. In most cases, he concluded, people were preyed upon by "predaceous" bears living in rural or remote areas and without much, if any, exposure to peoples’ food or garbage. Some of these bears were "campground" or "garbage" bears, which had become progressively less fearful of humans and decided to go one step further and kill someone. In Manitoba, there are only two records of a black-bear inflicted human fatality, despite thousands of encounters between people and bears.

It's unlikely that the victims did anything, deliberately or inadvertently to trigger the attacks. A predaceous bear may simply have been the exception that chose a human as its prey. In other words, the victim may just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.