The male black bear known as Parker hangs out in Whistler this past May. Photo by Sylvia Dolson/Special to The Question

An adult male black bear that had broken into at least two homes in Whistler to access food has been destroyed after being determined to have been a public safety threat.

The bear, known to local bear experts as Parker, was shot and killed after being caught in a culvert trap early Wednesday (July 14), Chris Doyle of the B.C. Conservation Officer Service said.

Officers said they are certain that Parker is the bear that broke into two homes in the Alta Vista/Blueberry area on Monday (July 12), and to have accessed food from concession stands at the Whistler Golf Course and Wayside Park, Doyle said.

Early Wednesday, the bear entered a trap set up for it along Archibald Way in Alta Vista.

“We were able to determine that it was the bear that had entered the homes because it had a unique combination of ear tags that witnesses had identified earlier,” Doyle said, adding that the bear had a green tag on his right ear and a yellow tag on its left ear.

A second bear — an adult female — was caught in a trap set up nearby and was given a short-distance relocation south of Function Junction. Doyle said the female bear was ear tagged but has not been causing problems.

Parker, also known as BM17, was first captured in the day skier lots in 2006 and was fitted with a GPS collar by the Bear Aversion Research Team, Lori Homstol, current Whistler Bear Aware Coordinator and former leader of the research team, said in an email to The Question.

That summer he was “a very low conflict bear, using the outskirts of town and the green spaces… we rarely got reports of anyone seeing him for the first year that he was radio collared,” Homstol wrote.

In the summer of 2007 he started to access garbage in town and the aversion team put him through a three-day aversive conditioning program aiming to increase his wariness toward humans, she said.

“He started hanging out at Myrtle Philip School as they had an apple tree, but after they picked the apples, he moved on,” Homstol wrote.

Parker was nearly destroyed in 2008 after he repeatedly accessed garbage in Whistler Village “as many businesses were not securing their garbage properly,” Homstol wrote.

The bear did not come into conflict with humans in 2009, a summer when no bears were destroyed in the Whistler area for accessing food. Conservation officers, though, reported that after having initially been captured in October 2006, Parker was subsequently captured in July 2007, August 2008 and November 2009.

Parker was the second bear to have been shot and killed by officers in and around Whistler in 2010, the first for accessing human food sources. On May 21, RCMP officers shot and killed a bear that charged a dog with humans nearby. That incident occurred just off Highway 99 south of Function Junction.

The number of bear-related calls dropped off immediately after Parker was captured, Doyle said. Officials, though, are urging citizens to report all bear sightings and potential conflict situations by phoning (604) 905-BEAR (2327) or 1-877-952-7277.