The Globe and Mail reports that observations of bear deaths by conservationists, salmon-stream walkers and ecotourism guides could point to an unfolding ecological disaster not yet documented by biologists.

On the British Columbia coast, salmon runs provide a crucial food supply for black and grizzly bears, which eat the fish to store up enough fat to survive the winter.

The salmon have been in decline for several years, and were especially scarce last year.

Doug Neasloss, a bear-viewing guide with the Kitasoo-Xaixais tribes in Klemtu, told the paper: “I've never experienced anything like this.” He said he hadn’t seen any bears this fall.

This is a time you can usually see 20 to 30 bears a day feasting on salmon, according to Ian McAllister, Conservation Director of Wild Pacific.

“There are just no bears showing up. I hear that from every stream walker on the coast,” he told Globe and Mail reporter Mark Hume.

But a U.S. biologist who spent 21 years in Alaska studying salmon-eating bears says that such deaths due to the decline of a single food source are very unlikely.

Sterling Miller of the U.S. National Wildlife Federation says that bears are omnivores and would find other sources of food to subsist on in the absence of salmon.

"You cannot draw conclusions about the status of bear populations from sort of random observations along a salmon stream," he told Canadian Press. It requires several years of data compiled systematically to reveal a population trend, he said.

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