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Tips for humans to avoid bear confrontations

Scientist strongly advises carrying bear spray for backcountry users to prevent attacks
Black bear - Getty Images
Black bears become conditioned to wander into city neighbourhoods, especially during the fall season, to eat fruit off trees and dig into garbage bins for food scraps.

Prince George is surrounded by rivers, lakes, forests and nature trails that are a magnet for backcountry users.

That close proximity and easy access for city dwellers also makes residential areas attractive for bears.

The arrival of fall triggers a psychological condition in bears known as hyperphagia, which causes them to crave extreme amounts of food – an average of 20,000 calories per day for an adult bear preparing to den and hibernate during the winter months.

If you’ve lived in Prince George for any length of time, it’s not an uncommon sight to see a bear wandering through the neighbourhood in search of fruit trees or garbage bins to feed their hunger.

In the past 30 days, the BC Conservation Office has responded to 141 calls about bears coming into the people’s yards or on Prince George city streets. For some bears, their habit of visiting people places results in a death sentence. Over the past 10 years, the city has averaged 890 calls per for bear sightings. On average, 35 bears per year are destroyed, more than any other B.C. city.

“Removing a bear lethally is also a short-term answer as there will be another to take its place and the cycle will continue,” said Vanessa Isnardy, the Kamloops-based program manager of WildSafeBC.

Conservation officers sometimes have no choice but to shoot bears or cubs habituated to human contact or conditioned to non-natural food source. Relocating them away from the city is rarely effective because they often will return.

“Black bears are often rewarded for coming into communities by having easy access to sources of food such as organics in garbage, fruit on trees, bird seed, barbeque grease, pet food and small livestock, “ said Isnardy. “Once a bear learns this behaviour, it will remember it for the rest of its life. Bears that stay in communities to forage may become very motivated to access food sources which can lead to property damage and, at times, a risk to public safety.

“The best way to prevent this is to not teach bears that our communities have easy sources of food. This means keeping garbage stored in a secure location indoors, picking fruit early and not allowing it to accumulate, protecting small livestock with electric fencing, keeping our barbecues free of food residue, not feeding birds when bears are active and feeding our pets inside.”

City residents who wake up in the middle of night to the disturbing sound of a grunting bear tipping over a garbage container while foraging for food might be tempted to confront that bear to try to scare it away, but Isnardy says that’s not such a good idea.

“That’s a recipe for injury,” said Isnardy. “You can always try to discourage a bear from your property if you can do it from a safe place, inside from a window or in your vehicle honk your horn. That may or may not work, depending how motivated that bear is and also how comfortable and how long that bear has been foraging. Bears get desensitized the longer they spend in our communities.”

Once a bear realizes there are no repercussions and how easy it is to get food, with no risk of infringing on another bear’s food source, the habit of coming into the city to sample a neighbourhood smorgasbord becomes ingrained.

“Bird-feeders do reward a bear for being in the city, and it’s a strong reward,” said Isnardy. “One kilogram of bird seed has 8,000 calories, it’s a perfect food source. A fruit tree has all those apples on one tree, it’s such a huge attractant to a bear and an easy way to put on pounds, and they remember.”

The city experimented with bear-proof garbage bins in a three-year pilot project that started in 2010 and 300 households took part in the study, which proved because the locking latches tended to get stuck in a closed position, especially in the cold-weather months.

Isnardy said people can keep some the smellier, more tasty garbage attractants, such as scraps of meat and bones and other leftovers, by freezing them until it’s garbage-collection day.

“It takes a concerted effort to do that and it takes work, just like learning how to recycle,” she said. “Twenty years ago no one recycles, now everyone’s recycling everything.”

Bear biologist offers tips for backcountry users to avoid an attack

In response to Monday’s predatory black bear attack at Bear Mountain Cross-Country Ski Club near Dawson Creek that left two women with life-altering injuries and also injured a teenage boy, the Northern Bear Awareness Society of Prince George posted on its Facebook site the advice of bear biologist Lana Ciarniello to help keep people safe when the head into the woods for a hike.

Ciarniello advises:

1) Always make human noise while hiking in bear country. Call out frequently (such as "NO BEAR!"), sing or talk loudly amongst yourself.

2) Never run. Never run. Never run. A bear can run faster than the fastest human. Running can evoke the predatory response, as may have been the case with this encounter.

When we encounter a bear it is our responsibility to ‘speak’ to the bear and we do this through our body language. Normally it is, stand your ground, lower your eyes/gaze, talk in a low but gruff voice, and if possible back away slowly facing the bear. It is also important to determine if it is a grizzly bear or Black bear and if there are cubs. All of these factors play into how to properly respond.

Depending on the bear’s reaction you may make yourself as big as possible, yell boldly at the bear. Or you may make yourself as small as possible, show submission/subordination.

Determining what type of surprise encounter lets one know how to respond and then that proper response can normally/most times get one out of a negative encounter.

3) ALWAYS carry bear spray……….this cannot be stated enough times. Always, always. I carry two cans. And BOTH are accessible. Know how to use the bear spray.

4) It is currently hyperphagia, which literally translates to excessive eating. It is hot, dry and not the best year for green veg foods and for berries in some areas. Bears are hungry. It is our job to make ourselves known before we even see a bear……..

Just some facts because it always seems the bear gets the blame.