Authorities in British Columbia say a female grizzly and her three cubs attacked and killed Jennifer Balcarras, 48, and her daughter, Selah Reed, 20, near Bella Coola. The link was made by DNA testing, not by assumption. Inspector Jeff Tyre of the Conservation Officer Service said the four bears were “all actively involved” in the attack.

According to the family, as reported by CBC, the two set out on 31 October on the Snooka West Trail and did not come back. They were reported missing the next day. Balcarras’s remains were found on 2 November, and Reed’s on 3 November, about 150 metres away.

On Tuesday, Tyre said the attack likely involved predatory behaviour, which he called “very rare”. The four bears were killed. The service’s reason: bears involved in a fatal attack on people cannot be rehabilitated or relocated, and the behaviour is an extreme risk to the public. The trapping equipment has been removed, and the investigation of the attack has concluded. More than a dozen officers worked in difficult terrain and weather.

These bears were not the ones in the November 2025 attack on a group of students and teachers, also in the Bella Coola area. Eleven people were injured then, two of them critically, and that bear was never found.

Samuel Schooner, elected chief of the Nuxalk Nation, called the event “deeply, deeply unsettling”. The community has set night patrols, escorts children to school and offers rides to anyone who needs them. People are asked to be careful outdoors, stay close to children, leave no food or rubbish that attracts bears, and stay away from the Snooka West Trail.

Balcarras worked as an art therapist in the community. Reed was an education assistant. Jennifer’s brother, Josh Balcarras, described them as “two peas in a pod”: when Jenny hiked, Selah was right beside her. Bella Coola is a remote community, about 1,000 kilometres north of Vancouver.

The photograph shows a house in the Bella Coola valley, not the Snooka West Trail, not the two women’s home and not the bears. Image: Wallace Howe, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Source: Four grizzly bears killed Canadian mother and daughter, authorities say, The Washington Post.