A West Vancouver man’s sentencing for deliberately feeding a mother bear and her cub has been postponed.
Vitali Shevchenko caused an uproar in 2018 when video and photos of his family hand-feeding bears from their West Vancouver backyard circulated widely on social media. In 2020, the Crown charged Shevchenko with two counts under the provincial Wildlife Act – one charge of leaving attractants for dangerous wildlife and one charge of feeding dangerous wildlife.Last October, Whistler resident Zuzana Stevikova received a $60,000 fine for feeding bears from her home. The B.C. Conservation Office Service said at the time that it was the highest overall penalty ever imposed under the B.C.'s Wildlife Act.
“Mr. Shevchenko has got a similar offence and so that [appeal] is going to have a significant impact on the sentencing position, one way or the other,” he said.twitter.com/brentrichter