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All Attractants Articles
GILBERT Ariz. -- A Gilbert woman was mauled by a black bear while walking her dog in Pinetop late Tuesday night.
The attack occurred near Sports Village Loop in the Pinetop Country Club approximately 60 yards from a Dumpster where the adult male bear had been scavenging, according to the Arizona Game and Fish Department.
Officials said the bear returned to attack the 61-year-old victim more than once.
Conservation officers caught and killed a large, adult male black bear in Whistler this week after the bear got into a house in Alta Vista when two people were at home. It was the first bear to be killed because of conflict this season.
On Tuesday (June 21), the bear went "deep into the house and into the kitchen" where it found food, said Chris Doyle, conservation officer. The bear returned several times, circling the house and looking at doors and windows for a way back in.
Restaurants and food establishments throughout West Yellowstone are in the process of placing barrels behind their businesses.
Heavy-duty green lids have been specially modified to fit the tops of the 50-gallon containers and are securely fastened to wooden pallets that sit on the ground.
It's a graphic reminder about the importance of securing garbage cans or coolers full of food -- to keep bears from breaking in. The black bears at the BC Wildlife park in Kamloops got a special snack today - one that bear aware hopes will send a powerful message. Wildlife park officials demonstrated just how easy it is for a persistent bruin to crack open most garbage containers. The park is hoping to be designated an official "test site" for bear-resistant cans
CARBONDALE, Pa. -- Wildlife officials put down a young black bear at a northeast Pennsylvania park where it had been hand-fed by visitors, according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission.
"Removing this bear is most unfortunate, but necessary given this particular bear's habituation to approaching people for food," Steve Schweitzer, Game Commission Northeast Region Office director, stated in a news release that was issued on Wednesday. "Black bears have a natural instinct to avoid humans. A habituated bear that has lost its natural fear of humans and begins to associate people with providing food is the type of bear we do not want in the resident bear population. It would be irresponsible not to remove such a bear after we observed the bear repeatedly confronting people to obtain food."
CALGARY - B.C. wildlife officials overseeing the fate of the so-called Lake Christina grow-op bears say they've had to destroy one post-hibernation bruin.
But conservation inspector Aaron Canuell said fears many of the black bears emerging from their winter sleep would seek human handouts they'd become accustomed to at a property discovered by RCMP last summer have so far proved largely unfounded.
As wildlife educators call for Nelsonites to do a better job of managing bear attractants in the city, a bylaw that would restrict when residents can put their garbage out is headed to city council.
Local Bear Aware coordinator Joanne Siderius has asked council to add a dawn-to-dusk clause to its garbage bylaw and make it a fineable offense to put trash on the curb before the day of collection.
The request originally came before council last November, but Siderius says the city’s latest brush with grizzlies shows Nelson still needs to do more to minimize bear conflict.
Jessy Coltrane, the Anchorage-area wildlife biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, pulled her big white pickup onto Tudor Road and headed for one of the city's worst bear-problem neighborhoods: Muldoon.
The cab of her truck was packed with gun cases and rain gear. The bed held a dog kennel to haul moose calves and one very large net.
Each summer has a similar, chaotic tempo, she said. The bear calls begin in May. Then the moose start giving birth, and that goes on all of June while the bear calls keep ramping up. Mostly it's black bears scaring up trouble in neighborhoods. Occasionally, there's more serious trouble with a brown bear. The wildlife crescendo comes at the end of July and then things drop off once berry season starts and bears get more interested in blueberries than old pizza boxes, she said.
Nelson's conservation officer had to shoot and kill two juvenile grizzlies seen around Nelson this spring after the animals found easy pickings in people's garbage.
Jason Hawkes, conservation officer for the Nelson area, confirmed the two bears were shot last week - Thursday, May 26.
Both bears, part of a family of four that frequented Nelson last year, were getting into garbage instead of eating grass and glacier lilies at higher elevations.
The death this week of a mother grizzly on the train tracks near Lake Louise — leaving two cubs orphaned — has renewed calls for Canadian Pacific and Parks Canada to do something about the problem of bear deaths.
A number of initiatives have been in place for years, including vegetation management along the right-of-way and the vacuuming up of grain fallen from passing railcars. As well, crews report bear sightings to the rail traffic controller, and other crews are thus alerted to the bear’s presence. It’s heartening, however, to learn that new initiatives will be unveiled in a joint announcement in the next few months by CP and Parks Canada, and that future efforts arising from CP’s five-year, $1-million research program will begin to focus on the science around bear behaviour.
A Labrador woman who stopped to photograph a group of black bears ended up just inches away from one of her subjects – after it jumped on the roof of her car.
Diane Budgell said she was driving on the road from North West River to Happy Valley-Goose Bay Thursday when she spotted three bears near the road.
Wildlife officials are concerned that black bears coming out of hibernation are showing up in alarming numbers along the Sea to Sky Highway near Whistler, B.C.
Part of the problem is clover planted on the roadside when the highway was expanded before the 2010 Olympics. Bear experts say the animals love clover and will brave fast-moving traffic to get it.
May to October, it's an odd day in Whistler that I don't see a black bear. Sometimes I have to go out of my way not to. I've bumped into them taking out the garbage, walking down the street, at Starbucks Creekside, outside Village 8 Cinemas, running on the valley trail, biking everywhere and on skis (in a November snowstorm so fierce that the animal itself was caked in white like a Polar Bear). I like the fact that we live in such proximity to black bears, and I get pissed when people's carelessness in yards, homes or on the road results in their death. I'm neither afraid nor overly trusting-after all, they're black bears. I have healthy respect and treat them like the wild, wary animals they should remain.
A growing unease about the increase in bears being killed and injured on the Sea to Sky Highway, as well as traffic safety concerns relating to copious "bear jams," has prompted further investigation by the Get Bear Smart Society, along with the many members of the Whistler Black Bear Working Group.
While both organizations have been integral to reducing human-bear conflict in and around Whistler for many years, the main focus of the group has been public education with respect to securing attractants and bear proofing the waste management system. This new phenomena is cause for significant concern among the stakeholders.
I can picture the Herald online reader comments. "Goodness gracious! Enough with bears, already!"
Indeed, bears have been prominent in the local media of late: reports marking the start of the bear season, a failed legislative attempt at extending the bear hunting season, the $1.95 million judgment awarded to the family of an 11-year old boy killed by a bear in 2007 in Utah and a cub recently killed by a vehicle near Chapman Hill.
The pot bears are back.
Allen Piche, the Christina Lake, B.C., farmer accused by police of using docile black bears to guard a marijuana grow-op, says the animals are coming out of hibernation and returning to his property in search of a snack. But because Mr. Piche is no longer giving them food, the bears he considers his friends aren't sticking around.
A large male grizzly bear was killed on the Trans-Canada Highway early last week just west of Lake Louise.
Hal Morrison, the wildlife-human conflict specialist for Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay, said the bear was hit by a vehicle either late night on May 9 or early morning on May 10 in a tunnel right underneath a new wildlife overpass. They suspect because of the distance the bear was from impact, it was hit by a large transport truck.
Every spring for the past 11 years, Samson has returned to feed in the same small area in the Whistler Valley.
As the largest of the male black bears identified by bear researcher Michael Allen, Samson doesn't have an ear tag (used by Conservation Officers to track conflict history) and has no known history of serious conflict, making him a perfect example of a bear co-existing healthily with humans.
A wildlife biologist scheduled to speak in Durango next week says her research shows that black bears become human-food chow hounds for life if they forage in urban areas as cubs. Rachel Mazur studied black bear sows and cubs for 11 years in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks in California where she worked for the National Park Service. She now works for the Forest Service in Nevada.
In the national parks, Mazur's research subjects included bears that fed only in the wild and bears that lived off easily accessible campground garbage cans and loose trash left by day-use visitors.
As many as 26 black bears face a possible death sentence if conservation officers find they're still reliant on the dog food a Christina Lake man fed them for a decade, B.C.'s environment minister says.
The docile bears were discovered during a police raid on a suspected marijuana grow-op in August. The animals acted like friendly pets -- one lounged on an RCMP cruiser and watched as the officers did their work -- and police suspected they had been trained to guard the drug operation.
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