Alberta Parks is warning that an increase in food and garbage left behind in parks throughout the province lately is creating a dangerous situation for both humans and wildlife.
Jay Honeyman, a biologist with Alberta Environment and Parks, said the issue mainly revolves around bear-proof garbage bins being stuffed to the brim.
“The bear-proof garbage bins have reached capacity and people are putting the garbage on top of the bins because they’re full, or they’re putting them beside the bins,” Honeyman told Global News Morning Calgary on Friday.
“I think part of this is related to the really high use (of Alberta parks) that we’ve been getting here over the last couple of months,” he said. “It’s higher than I can ever recall occurring.”
“The garbage bins have been able to do the job in the past but we’re just seeing so many people coming out recently – that the garbage bins, the capacity of the bins, just isn’t meeting the need.”
Honeyman said if visitors with garbage approach a bear-proof bin and find it’s full, they need to be either looking for a different one or taking their waste home to dispose of it.
“That obviously isn’t occurring — and it’s happening throughout Kananaskis Country and even in the town of Canmore or in the Bow Valley,” he said. “It’s a fairly regular occurrence.”
“If the bin is full, you can’t put your garbage on top of the bin.”
Honeywell added that garbage collection will likely need to be ramped up, but even that wouldn’t solve the problem completely.
“It should be noted that this area of the Rockies is probably got some of the best garbage management systems in the world, but they’re only as good as the people that are using the system.”
Honeywell warned an overabundance of waste in parks can lead to food-conditioned wildlife, including bears, which is dangerous to visitors.
“It doesn’t bode well for the wildlife and it creates problems for people as well,” Honeywell said. “We’ve had a couple of cases where we’ve had to translocate bears – in other words, capture bears and move them out of the area — which isn’t a great thing for bears to have to put up with.”
“We’ve had cases in the past where we’ve had to euthanize bears because they’ve gotten into garbage…We don’t want to be doing those kinds of things if we can help it.”
On Thursday, officials with Waterton Lakes National Park revealed a young black bear had to be euthanized earlier this month after displaying an “excessive level of habituation and food-conditioning.”
So how can you be sure you’ve safely disposed of your garbage in a bear-proof bin?
“The door has to close firmly in order to keep wildlife out of garbage,” Honeywell explained.