Rummaging in the garbage, raiding birdfeeders, eating walnuts in the carport: Bears coming out of hibernation are making increasingly bold forays into suburban areas looking for food, a problem aggravated by urban developments that encroach on the wilderness.Conservation Officer Service
When Julie Kanya saw the black bear and its cubs fleeing through a residential area of Coquitlam, B.C., she knew she had to intervene to deal with what had spooked them.
The urban wildlife co-ordinator for the city of about 140,000, just east of Vancouver, pulled over and told an elderly man to stop chasing the bears with his smartphone. “He was surprised to be approached," she said, recalling the incident a few years ago. “He didn’t seem to think it was a big deal, but it definitely is.”
Spring in British Columbia means black bears are coming out of hibernation, roaming around and looking for food, largely plant life. However, this has resulted in some remarkable situations in the Vancouver region because urban development has nudged up against wilderness areas that are home to the bears, which can weigh between 80 to 300 kilograms.
They poke around in backyards, parking lots, suburban malls and elsewhere. They turn up around the main campus of Simon Fraser University atop Burnaby Mountain. Several years ago, one ended up in downtown Vancouver. More recently, fire officials in Pitt Meadows, near Vancouver, suggested a bear looking for food was to blame for a fire that destroyed a barn because the bear knocked over a heat lamp. And one even interrupted ferry service on May 18 near Nanaimo.
Conservation officials and municipalities are ready to deal with bears that get too close to humans, but they say one increasingly vexing challenge has been people eager to get material for social media. They come too close to animals instead of keeping a wary distance.
“We live in an age where people really crave attention on social media,” Ms. Kanya says. People gravitate to black bears because they are “charismatic” animals that can lead to “likes" on social media, she says. “From time to time, we do have reports of people not giving the bears the respect they need.”
Members of the B.C. Conservation Officer Service deploy live bear traps in the Squamish area: Above, Sergeant Simon Gravel puts one in Alice Lake Provincial Park, while below, officer Brittany Mueller puts one near a house.
Photos: Darryl Dyck/The Globe and Mail
Markus Merkens, regional parks biologist for the Metro Vancouver federation of 21 municipalities, recalls someone using a drone to photograph and harass a black bear in a park. “I personally have seen people put themselves at risk, trying to approach closer to a bear to get their picture,” he says, suggesting 100 metres is a good distance. “Put a long lens on your camera.”
In one high-profile case last year, members of a North Shore family posted shots on Instagram showing them feeding a bear and cubs at their door.
Too-close shots posted online can lead to varied complications. They can encourage others to show up seeking similar shots, creating new risks. And the exercise of taking such photos can be part of a process that lead black bears to become accustomed to humans, prompting the bears to be fearless about approaching homes in search of food.
"If [the bear] is pretty comfortable with a crowd of people standing around him, he’s probably going to be comfortable climbing over a fence into your backyard to get into trouble, and into unnatural food sources, which leads, more often, to the bear’s demise,” Ms. Kanya says.
Sgt. Gravel looks inside a dumpster in a residential area where a bear has been sighted recently.DARRYL DYCK
So far this spring, members of the provincial Conservation Officer Service have had to kill seven Vancouver-region bears that presented a risk largely because they became too accustomed to humans. That’s down from nine last year. Over all, there have been 432 bear calls in the Lower Mainland this spring, a mix of accounts of bears being sighted, destroyed residential property as bears look for food, to more alarming situations.
The officer service has 15 officers deployed across the Lower Mainland, equipped with tranquillizer guns and drugs specific to bears. They also have bear blankets with handles that can, with help, be used to carry tranquillized bears.
They deal with matters such as environmental enforcement – “the poachers, the polluters” – as well as cougars, “but bears are a big part of what we have to do," says Murray Smith, Lower Mainland inspector for the conservation officer service.
There have been no injuries linked to the social-media trend, but officials are uneasy about it.
“We do have public-safety issues associated to bears because we have bears in close proximity to people in urban areas," Mr. Smith says.
Attacks are rare, but do occur. In 2016, a 10-year-old girl was left with a punctured lung, broken ribs and superficial cuts as a result of an attack by a mother black bear near the Coquitlam River. The bear had to be killed.
Three incidents last year included two in Coquitlam – a man was chased by a pair of bears after he arrived at a commuter rail station, as well as a man who was knocked over by a bear that wandered into his garage. He threw a shovel at it.
“A bear can do a lot of damage with the swipe of a paw or a bite, so it’s serious, and not to be taken lightly," Mr. Smith says.
DARRYL DYCK/The Globe and Mail
Ian Bailey