A 3-year-old girl is in the hospital after being attacked by an adult black bear in British Columbia. The attack happened Sunday morning at a home in Maple Ridge while the little girl was playing on the back deck. A parent chased the bear away, but officers who responded witnessed the animal’s aggression.
“The bear returned to the residence and the immediate area multiple times, showing a high degree of interest in the location,” according to the Maple Ridge Royal Canadian Mounted Police in a release posted late Sunday. “Officers made the decision to discharge a firearm in an effort to protect public safety in the immediate area. The bear was struck but continued to flee into a wooded area.”
A necropsy of another bear killed in the area confirmed the offending bear is still at large. Neighbors are advised to stay indoors while officers continue to look for the wounded bear. The 3-year-old victim was airlifted to the hospital with what police describe as non-life-altering injuries.
Black bear sightings are common in Maple Ridge due to the city’s proximity to forested habitat. The city, with a population of about 100,000 people, is situated less than an hour from Vancouver and has its own Wildlife and Vector Control Bylaw. The bylaw mandates many bear-proofing strategies including garbage cans that must not be out before 5 a.m., fruit trees that must be harvested as soon as they’re ripe, and beehives that must be inaccessible to bears. Fines for bylaw violations range from $100 to $500 daily.
“Due to the abundance of food available to black bears, the population has exploded,” reads the city’s website. “The grizzly bear population has shrunk in our area due to high human occupation, but grizzlies have been sighted.”
The Vancouver Sun reports a British Columbia Conservation Officer Service predator attack team has joined the search for the wounded bear in Maple Ridge. Another predator attack team also investigated a different bear attack Sunday. This one happened near Pemberton, about three hours from Maple Ridge. It involved a male hiker and a grizzly bear. The man has non-life-threatening injuries and investigators determined it was a surprise encounter so that bear won’t be tracked down.
“Officers have confirmed there is no ongoing threat to other backcountry users,” BCCOS said in a statement. “Warning signage is being installed in the area.”
B.C. is home to 120,000 to 160,000 black bears, about one quarter of Canada’s black bears. That’s considered the current population estimate, but it’s based on 2001 statistics. Organizations and tribes have called on the Canadian government for updated research since development cutting into old-growth forests may be reducing the black bear population more than suspected.
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The government does keep an annual log of known black bear deaths. It tallied a 15-year-low for British Columbia with 240 black bears killed or euthanized (does not include hunting) in 2025. Of those, 178 were killed by conservation officers for public safety reasons. By comparison, officials have killed 73 black bears for the same reason in the first half of 2026.
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