B.C. camper wakes up to find bear sniffing him inside tent

A man camping in northern B.C. woke up to find a black bear sniffing him in the middle of Sunday night, after it tore through his tent'sscreened window.

The man was able to chase the black bear away from his campsite at Peace Island Park,but it had to be chased off a second time hours later.

It's the kind of call conservation officers dread,said Sgt. ShawnBrinsky.

"You don't ever want to hear those stories. That's about a close of a call as you can have," Brinskysaid.

The bearwas euthanized the next day. The conservation service said it was too "garbage conditioned" to be released.

Brinskysaid the bear woke the man up around 1 a.m. PT.

"The bear had ripped through the screen and was halfway into the tent," the officersaid.

"He, of course, then yelled and scared the bear off."

The animal came back around 4 a.m. PT. Again, it was chased away.

Later that morning, conservation officers set snares around the campsite, which isabout 20kilometres southeast of Fort St.John. The bear was trapped and euthanized around dusk.

Brinskysaid officers used paw prints to be sure they had the right animal.

He said the bear was killed because it was dangerously comfortable with humans.

"Up here, it's not uncommon to see bears," the officer said.

"What's uncommon is for a bear to be willing to go into a confined space. That's a bear that's become very bold.

"There's zero doubt in my mind:that's a garbage-conditioned bear."

Officers looking for food source

Brinsky said there wasn't any food in the man'stent that night. Investigators will be looking through the area to see what might have attracted the animal.

"If we can find the sources of those problems, like garbage or food or stuff that's going around in that area ... we want to deal with that," he said.

"For the bear's sake and the human's sake, we don't want that to happen again."

The 1802:00Careless camping endangers bears

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Previous attacks in B.C.

In 2015, a27-year-oldman died after a black bear dragged him from his campsite.Daniel Ward Folland O'Connor, known as Ward, had been camping with his fiance near Mackenzie.

In 2009, agrizzly bear attacked two Nelson, B.C., men as they slept in their tent near Canal Flats. Both men were left withminor injuries.

People who see a bear getting into garbage are asked to report the animalto B.C.'s RAPPline.

With files from Chad Pawson.