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All Black Bears Articles
Workers at a northern Alberta oil site are outraged after a wildlife officer shot and killed a mother black bear and her three cubs for entering their camp's living area.
They claim camp managers are negligent for allowing garbage and food to be stored outside and refusing to build a fence around the compound.
BOISE, Idaho - An Idaho elk hunter who apparently stumbled across a bear's resting spot Saturday was hospitalized after the animal bit him and broke his right arm, officials said.
Richard Paini, 40, suffered puncture wounds and an injured left hand along with the broken forearm in the attack at about 9 a.m. He was taken to the Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center in Idaho Falls.
Jeanie is a Whistler icon. But the 20-something black bear with a swath of white fur across her chest and eyes that seem to be lined with shadow is unfazed by her fame.
She does her best to tolerate the town-folk who have unofficially adopted her. She is photographed by tourists, gawked at from chairlifts, edged off trails by mountain bikers and awakened by heavy equipment. She ventures into Whistler Village occasionally - when she needs food for herself and her cubs and can't get enough in the mountains.
Recently, I was drawn to reflect upon the work that I have been doing with the Get Bear Smart Society. We have seen some tremendous improvements since the 1990s and I am so incredibly proud to be a part of the bear smart movement.
Most of our success can be contributed to education. When people know better, they do better. When people make the connection between their actions and an outcome, they can adjust their actions. It is a process; part of realizing our role in our community and also as part of the greater ecosystem and our natural environment. It is about taking responsibility.
PORT COQUITLAM - Port Coquitlam is now enforcing bear regulations in its solid waste bylaw on both the north and south sides of the city for the first time, according to a press release from the city.
Bear regulations have been enforced on the north side since they were introduced in 2009. Lately, however, an increasing number of bears have been spotted in south side neighbourhoods - especially near the Coquitlam River and Colony Farm.
B.C. conservation officers shot 17 bears in the Christina Lake area this summer, and they suspect many were the famous "pot bears" found at a marijuana grow-op last year.
Insp. Aaron Canuel says three times the number of bears were euthanized in the area this year, compared to past years. Most were shot because they had become a nuisance and were too comfortable with people, he said.
The one-time bear man of Alaska's capital city pleaded guilty to a single count of feeding game last week.
As his penalty for trying to make pets of about a dozen black bears, 65-year-old Arnold W. Hanger was ordered to pay the state $4,000 and perform 80 hours of community-service work for the Wildlife Division of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. In addition, he will spend two years on probation.
A 39-year-old hunter killed by a wounded grizzly bear yelled out to draw the 400-pound male bear toward him in an effort to keep it from attacking his young hunting partner, the man's family said.
"They both shot it and it kept coming," Steve Stevenson's mom, Janet Price, said on Saturday. "Steve yelled at it to try and distract it, and it swung around and took him down. It's what my son would have done automatically, for anybody."
You can tell a person where the fruit is but you can't make them pick. The one's who always seem to be around and picking at this time of year are the ones with the heavy black coats - that is, if we don't beat them to buffet.
Apples, pears, plums, apricots... pretty much the same stuff we grow and consume, are bear magnets and it's no surprise the omnivores would enjoy the fruits as much as we do.
Secure attractants. It's a concept as simple as wearing your seatbelt, and yet for some campers in the bear-heavy areas around Whistler, it's not considered until after a bear has rifled through their campsite or vehicle.
But for those in the Cal-Cheak area, there's only so much campers can do without bear-resistant food storage bins.
In the Whistler area, Vaccinium berries - huckleberries and blueberries - are roughly five weeks behind, which means as we near mid-September there is no high elevation berry crop.
The highest elevation at which bears are now berry feeding (Sept. 9) is 4,200 ft, that's usually where bears are berry feeding in late July and early August.
Four years ago the Alaska Legislature offered Gov. Sarah Palin and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game a special deal: $400,000 to "educate" voters on predator control. The money -- spent mostly on a video, glossy brochures and public presentations -- was meant to persuade and reassure Alaskans that predator control is essential and effective.
Firmly convinced he's doing the right thing, the new director of the Division of Wildlife Conservation at Fish and Game, Corey Rossi, is taking predator control to new levels. For the first time since statehood, Alaska has targeted grizzly bears for large-scale population reductions, not by hunters but by agents of the state.
British Columbia's coastal grizzly bears often have a hard time securing their life requisites, as humans interfere with much of their day-to -day existence. Grizzlies face a myriad of threats, from the degradation of their habitat by industrial forestry, to their direct killing via trophy hunting. They also face fierce competition for their most important food source, wild salmon, from commercial and sport fisheries.
That competition may have gotten more extreme this summer, as BC's north coast commercial salmon fishermen have discarded over 20% (by weight) of their catch, including 1.4 million pounds (636 metric tons) of chum salmon. Many of these fish are from stocks that federal fisheries scientists have described as 'conservation concern'. One-half of these chum discards came from areas in and around the Great Bear Rainforest.
Most of the discarded fish are not expected to survive because salmon hauled up in nets and onto decks need careful handling to be released back to the water unharmed.
LAKE TAHOE (KABC) -- A black bear took a wild ride after stealing a car, wrecking a Toyota Prius.
The bear climbed completely into it while the car was parked outside a Lake Tahoe cabin.
Cece McCarthy and her son Dylan said they watched for nearly 30 minutes as the bear struggled to get out. It somehow hit the gear shift and ended up driving backwards.
This summer in Yellowstone National Park, on two separate occasions, two men sadly lost their lives from deadly encounters with grizzly bears. Both of these men did not carry bear pepper spray, and if they would have, they would likely still be alive. As autumn approaches and the leaves begin to change, its time to look at some other changes that will prevent the brutal loss of life that Yellowstone has experienced this year.
WHITEFISH - More grizzly bears are keying in on unprotected chicken coops in western Montana, with increasingly deadly consequences - both for the bears and the pilfered poultry.
The rise in bear-related chicken raids is ruffling the feathers of state and federal wildlife managers who are forced to move or kill bears that receive a food reward, be it from a trash can, a fruit orchard or a bird pen. The conflicts are entirely avoidable, managers say, but it's the responsibility of landowners to buck the disturbing trend.
INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. — Nothing evokes the passion of a certain sect of Lake Tahoe residents quite like the issue of black bear management. Nevada's re cent legalization of the state's first bear hunt, coupled with the killing of a nuisance bruin in July that was captured in the Raley's parking lot, has inspired some residents to band together to formulate solutions.
While NoBearHuntNV.org is a formal organization created to oppose the bear hunt, the latest movement to center on bruin issues is more informal, consisting of a handful of local residents who are taking it upon themselves to photograph trash re ceptacles that are out of compliance with the Incline Village General Improvement District's trash ordinance.
Bears accessing recycling bins around Whistler Village this season is bringing concerns about bear-proof bins to the surface again.
"It can potentially be an issue," said conservation officer, Sgt. Chris Doyle, "and the more we can do to prevent to address human wildlife conflict the better, obviously - but an issue like this is a bigger problem (than can be addressed) in a short period of time."
A 45-year-old West Vancouver resident is facing charges under the Wildlife Act after he was seen driving through Whistler with two dead black bears strapped to the roof of his van.
On Sunday (Aug. 28) at about 7 p.m. Whistler RCMP received a report of a GMC van travelling south on Highway 99 from Emerald Estates with what appeared to be a bear strapped to the vehicle, said Sgt. Shawn LeMay. When police located the vehicle and stopped it along the highway near Whistler Cay, two dead bears were found on the roof.
Black bears in residential neighborhoods aren't exactly unheard of in Juneau. While many people stay inside when bears are about, one local woman says she had a different instinct when she saw her dog was in trouble.
It started out as a typical evening for 22-year-old Brooke Collins. She let her dogs out as usual but this time, she said there was a black bear outside who took hold of her dachshund Fudge. She said she feared for her pet's life and, in an instant, ran over and punched the bear right in the face to make it let go.
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