A mother and daughter who were found dead along a hiking trail in British Columbia this week may have been killed by more than one grizzly bear, the Canadian wildlife authorities said.
Relatives reported the victims as missing on Sunday after they failed to return from the Snooka West Trail in Bella Coola, a small coastal community northwest of Vancouver.
Search teams discovered one set of remains on Monday afternoon and another about 500 feet away on Tuesday, officials said.
Jeff Tyre, an inspector with the British Columbia Conservation Officer Service, said at a virtual news conference on Wednesday that investigators were still working to locate a bear. “At this time,” he added, “we do not know if more than one bear may have been involved in the attack.”
The area was home to a large population of grizzly bears, Mr. Tyre said, and wildlife officers were trying to trap ones that were near the trail.
Mr. Tyre did not name the victims, but Canadian news outlets and a local teachers’ association identified them as Jennifer Balcarras and her daughter, Selah Reed. In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Josh Balcarras, one of Ms. Balcarras’s brothers, said she and her daughter were familiar with the trail and had been out for “just a casual walk” when the attack took place.
Officials said that an investigation was active and that it remained unclear whether the two had been carrying bear spray.
The deaths in Bella Coola, a remote settlement, came about a year after a grizzly bear severely mauled three children and an adult on a school trip. That attack, in November 2025, occurred about two miles from the site of the deaths this week.
While the bear in the attack last year was never captured, the authorities were able to collect its DNA. Mr. Tyre said officials would test samples collected from any bears that were trapped during the current investigation to determine whether there was a match, though he cautioned that it was too soon to tell if the attacks were linked. Any bear confirmed to have been involved would be killed “to protect public safety,” he said.
In response to the deaths, the Nuxalk Nation, the Indigenous governing body in Bella Coola, said it was recommending an 8 p.m. curfew for residents. It also said the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was conducting night patrols and escorting students from the school bus.
Ms. Balcarras, a mother of four and a grandmother, moved to Bella Coola in August to work as an art therapist and school counselor. In interviews with news outlets, her family described her as an experienced outdoorswoman who had previously lived in remote regions, including Alaska.
“They were not naïve city folks,” Matt Balcarras, a brother of Ms. Balcarras, said in an interview with The Vancouver Sun.
The Central Coast Teachers’ Association said in a statement on social media that Ms. Balcarras’s “kindness, dedication, and care have left a lasting impression on our school community.”
Ms. Reed, her youngest child, worked as an education assistant, and was described by relatives as an artist who loved ballet and the outdoors.
“They were two peas in a pod,” Josh Balcarras told the CBC. “When Jenny hiked, Selah was right there beside her.”
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