Some neighbourhoods just don't get it, so the Conservation Officer Service is going to bear down on them.
The Vanway area anchored by Heyer Road even has Bearpaw Crescent as one of its arteries, but CO Sgt. Steve Ackles said the residents have been resistant to efforts to prevent human-predator conflicts.
"Our efforts and warnings have gone unheeded in that area of town," Ackles said. "We are moving next to zero-tolerance ticket patrols. People there have no excuse. They have been warned and warned. Protect your children, protect your elders, protect your pets, and if you simply have to think of it this way, protect yourself. If you don't lock up your garbage and minimize your bear attractants, you are inviting the danger of a habituated bear right into your neighbourhood. The bears that come in for those human-caused meals are probably going to have to be destroyed, and it puts all the other homeowners in that area in danger."
It is not a city-wide problem. Bears are frequent visitors to every quadrant of Prince George. Even right downtown there have been instances of bears coming into the urban setting in pursuit of easy grub out of dumpsters and garbage bins.
Many neighbourhoods are frontline interface areas. Ackles reports proper cooperation in most subdivisions and districts.
"We put efforts into educating neighbourhoods, and a place like the Weber Crescent area (at the base of university hill, in between Ginter's Field and CN Centre) is different than Heyer Road. Those residents just go ahead and do everything we suggest. So I know we aren't asking unrealistic things. We most often get that cooperation. And that's what saves a lot of bears' lives and really reduces the dangers to people."
The list of requirements - and they are requirements under law, with hundreds of dollars in fines at the enforcement end - is short and simple.
Clean your barbecue thoroughly after every grilling.
Position bird feeders out of reach of bears and strictly clean up underneath them.
If you have fruit trees, pick the fruit and clear the fallen stuff away before it rots.
Keep meat waste out of composters.
The biggest one of all is, do not leave your garbage in an insecure place. Garbage cans must only be placed on the street as prescribed by city bylaws on your zone's pickup days. All other times, household garbage should be behind a door a bear cannot easily access (example: a robust shed or garage).
If you do not have such structures, it is recommended you obtain one or at the very least use strong tie-down straps to lock the receptacle lids. Bears can certainly break them, but generally leave such straps alone if they think it'll be too much work.
As it is with human thieves, each level of resistance adds to the bears' deterrence.
Ackles has killed too many bears in his career. For all the time he and his colleagues spend investigating poachers, sleuthing environmental crimes and keeping the area's hunting and fishing industries in line, he said far too much distraction comes their way from Prince George's bear-human conflicts. Too often it ends in the destruction of a bear. Almost all of it is preventable.
"I came here from down south (deployments mostly on Vancouver Island) and I thought I was coming to a place where people understood bears and knew how to handle their part of that relationship. It turned out, I was appalled at the utter disregard people had for bears," he said.
That attitude is changing and fast. Whereas he once sensed an almost unanimous apathy for whether a bear had to be killed over their own human behaviour, there is now a rapidly growing spirit of comprehension. There are many neighbourhoods like Weber Crescent.
People are now getting it that habituated bears are not only going to get killed by the score, but more will just move in to get killed in their place next year, and all of it invites a predatory threat to people. If a bear eats your garbage, eats the next household's garbage, then gets rejected at the end of the street, it is that final house where the bear is going to potentially get violent.
If none of the houses offers a false feed, typically the bears carry on to their natural food sources.
There is also a growing public understanding, after years of study and dialogue, that bears cannot usually be moved out of an urban area to some faraway wilderness area and still survive.
"In most circumstances the science supports that it doesn't work, and in my opinion it is just cruel to the bear to even try," Ackles said.
The mental tide is also turning on the overly caring public that used to do more harm than good to bears. That side of the public would refuse to report garbage bears in their neighbourhood out of fear that doing so would automatically trigger the killing of the bear.
"People think we just show up and shoot. Far from it," Ackles said. "I've saved 100 times the number of bears I've killed. We take each circumstance into full consideration, and the more people call us to report what bears are doing in their neighbourhood, the better information we have on which to base our decisions. We have a matrix for guiding our decisions. It's a monitor-manage-remove-destroy set of options based on the behaviours of the people involved and the behaviours of the bear involved."
These next few weeks are critical for bear-human relations. Bears are entering the hyperphagia phase of their annual cycle. They are about to start pounding the food back like a glutton at a roadside buffet. The local ecology is well set up to handle that hunger this year, but bears will grab whatever is easiest. Ackles implored the public to lock down those human sources: barbecues, tree fruit, bird/pet food, and worst of all garbage.
So far this summer, Prince George COs have only had to destroy six bears.
Since 1994, the average annual bruin body count is 40 per year.
To find out a full set of options to help save bears (and potentially people and pets) look up the Northern Bear Awareness Society online.
To report a human-wildlife interaction, please call the Report All Poachers and Polluters (RAPP) hotline at 1-877-952-7277 (RAPP).
