The B.C. Conservation Officer Service says a man has been fined $10,000 and banned from hunting for 15 years for illegally killing a grizzly bear near Elkford, in the interior of the province.
A decision from a provincial court judge in Fernie, B.C. this week also ordered Guofeng Li’s rifle be forfeited, the service said in a social media post. Fernie is about 625 kilometres east of Kelowna.
It said officers launched an investigation in the spring of 2020 after receiving a tip from the public about a man hunting bears using bait near the community of Elkford, about 690 kilometres east of Kelowna.
The service said the investigation took a year, but in 2021 conservation officers apprehended Li shooting a decoy black bear at the site where bait had been placed.
The investigation also found the man shot and killed a grizzly bear at the bait site and harvested parts from the animal.
The province imposed a ban on hunting grizzly bears in 2017, and the service says evidence gathered during the investigation led to a successful conviction of killing wildlife when it is not open season.
“There is no open season for grizzly bears in the province of British Columbia,” the conservation service said in a Facebook post. “The majority of the penalty will go to the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation to improve wildlife habitat in the Elk Valley.”