A conservation officer in Canada who was fired for refusing to kill two black bear cubs has won a protracted legal battle over his termination.
“I feel like the black clouds that have hung over my family for years are finally starting to part,” Bryce Casavant said. “But the moment is bittersweet — my firing should have never happened.”
Casavant was dispatched in 2015 to a mobile home park near Port Hardy, British Columbia, where a female black bear was rummaging through a freezer of meat and salmon.
Under the province’s policy, Casavant shot and killed the mother, but decided not to harm the cubs, who residents said had not been eating food or garbage.
“Instead of complying with the kill order, he took the cubs to a veterinarian who assessed them and transferred them to the North Island Recovery Centre,” the court documents said.
The two cubs were eventually released back into the wild, but because of his refusal to follow orders, Casavant was suspended and then fired.
Casavant spent years fighting his termination at various levels of provincial courts, and this week, the British Columbia Court of Appeals found in his favor.
“I kept fighting so that I could clear my name. I’ve long stood for public service, honor and integrity. It’s how I was raised and how I’ve raised my daughter,” said Casavant, who previously served in Afghanistan in the Canadian military. “I really feel that I was targeted.”
While the judgment does not reinstate him as a conservation officer, Casavant said that the decision was a “vindication” of his legal battle, which pitted him against two provincial governments and his own union.
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