If you want to save a bear or avoid being attacked by one, then conservation officers say to take care of your garbage properly. The message comes on the heels of a spike in wildlife encounters around Metro Vancouver this year, in part, to easily accessible food waste.
“It is frustrating at times when we’re trying to communicate the same story and some people aren’t getting the message and the attractants are still there,” says BC conservation officer Chris Doyle.
Attractants like ripe fruit trees, accessible garbage, easy to find food and people not paying enough attention to proper storage, has led to a sharp increase in bear encounters this year on the South Coast of B.C.
According to the BC conservation office, there have been 6,000 wildlife complaint calls since the beginning of April and 2,500 of those complaints were bear calls in the Tri-Cities.
“It is the fall and the bears are getting ready to hibernate,” says Steffanie Warriner with the City of Coquitlam.
“We’ve had a drier than normal summer, so we are seeing increased activity right now.”
Warriner told Global News the city has been educating residents through their ‘Bear Aware’ program for about 10 years on how to properly store garbage and other attractants in an effort to maintain public safety and minimize conflicts. ‘Bear Aware’ has now developed into the city’s Urban Wildlife program with a dedicated staff.
In the past year, Warriner says, public outreach by this team has included numerous public presentations, public events, and visiting homes.
But with complaint calls up about 50 per cent over last year, the conservation office is still asking all municipalities to do more to enforce existing wildlife bylaws.
“Obviously we’d like everybody to voluntarily comply and remove and contain attractants around their neighbourhoods,” Doyle says.
“But we also have a Bear Smart community program, where we engage communities to engage bear smart practices. And that includes bylaws implementation and enforcement of bylaws, as well as planning and education, and other things they can do in the community to help solve some of these conflict situations.”
Warriner says along with their education program, the team also actively enforces the city’s solid waste bylaw and that given the higher than normal bear activity this fall, has recently ramped up its enforcement efforts with four tickets and 118 warnings having been issued since Sept. 1.
Conservation officers will be meeting with municipalities in the coming weeks to reinforce the message.
~ with files from Samantha Falk
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