Was mutilated bear found in North Vancouver a victim of animal-parts trade?

Investigators from B.C.'s Conservation Officers Service still don't know how a rotting, mutilated black bear carcass ended up in a North Vancouver park within metres of a children's camp.

Nor is it clear whether the animal was a victim of the lucrative international traffic in bear parts.

Sadly, seeing bears in this state is not an uncommon occurrence in a region where the big city merges almost seamlessly with the West Coast's mountainous wilderness.

"It's not unusual to receive a complaint like this," Sgt. Todd Hunter of the service's Metro Vancouver zone tells Yahoo Canada News.

The bear's remains were found last week in Capilano River Regional Park. The animal's skull was removed from the head and the claws were torn out of its paws, Hunter said. The bear's abdomen had also been cut open, though the carcass was too badly decomposed to determine if organs had been removed.

"It's definitely human-influenced, with the removal of the parts and the incision to the abdominal cavity," he said.

The bear was shot anywhere from three to five days before it was found near the Camp Capilano parking lot. It's not clear if it was killed there or legally shot elsewhere and dumped. Hunting is banned in North Vancouver municipality, but it is bear-hunting season in the region until mid-June.

"It's disheartening to have that kind of occurrence reported," said Hunter.

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The fact the skull was carved out of the bear's head and the claws yanked out suggest they weren't destined for the Asian medicine trade, he said. The claws could be used to make pendants or a necklace and the skull perhaps is someone's idea of decoration.

A spokesman for B.C.'s Ministry of Environment told Yahoo Canada News it does not keep detailed statistics on wildlife poaching cases.

Across the border in Alberta, though, the Fish and Wildlife officers have laid about 900 charges related to illegal trafficking in the last 10 years, a provincial government spokesman said via email. Most of the charges originate in northeastern Alberta.

Oddly, trafficking in illegally caught fish is more common than other wildlife, said Brendan Cox of Alberta's Environment and Sustainable Resources Department.

"Bear trafficking cases are only a small percentage of overall fish and wildlife trafficking occurrences," he said.

In 2012, an Alberta couple was fined $100,000 and banned from hunting for 25 years after pleading guilty to 21 counts of illegal hunting, mostly poaching game-farm deer out of season. CTV News reported at the time it was one of the biggest poaching investigations in the province's history.

[ Related: B.C. native carver fined $11K for trafficking in dead, illicit wildlife ]

There's also a shadowy business in the trafficking of eagle parts, especially feathers and talons, for use in aboriginal ceremonies.

Provinces make parts available from birds killed accidentally but that apparently does not satisfy the demand. In B.C. alone it's estimated that up to a thousand eagles are killed annually for feathers and parts.

An Alberta brother and sister pleaded guilty earlier this year to possessing items made from 26 golden eagles and 39 bald eagles, CBC News reported.

And Rachel CrowSpreadingWings, a traditional powwow dancer from the southern Alberta Kainai Nation is fighting charges of participating in wildlife parts trafficking after she bought an eagle wing for her regalia.

"How is it wrong to give somebody money, when they give you a sacred object, when it's in mutual respect of that object and they know you're going to use it correctly?" she told CBC News back in February.

CrowSpreadingWings set up a Facebook page to tell her story and recently posted that her case has been adjourned until November.

Environment Canada tracks the trade in illicit animal parts inter-provincially and internationally.

Department communications officials were unable to supply figures in time for this story, but the World Wildlife Fund, whose affiliated organization TRAFFIC keeps tabs on the global trade, told Yahoo Canada News the problem in Canada doesn't appear significant against the traffic in endangered species and their parts worldwide.