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All Education Articles
May 26, 2011 — Media Coverage: Save a bear
OK. So summer is rolling in slowly and bear sightings on the road are getting more and more common every day. Again, a new wave of tourists is starting to come into town, stopping on their way up to take a closer look at the bears.
First of all, it is dangerous for the other drivers on the road and as we learned in the past, those situations can trigger bear attacks on humans and bears' lives are lost (because of this).
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.
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.
Being "bear aware" has been on the minds of many people in recent days, with a reported attack on hikers near Bozeman on Friday and another incident reported near Seeley Lake on Saturday.
Friday's attack on two hikers by a grizzly bear near Big Sky resulted in non-life threatening injuries to the two people.
If you believe Stephen Colbert - and really, who doesn't? - bears are deadly.
"Bears are soulless, godless, rampaging killing machines," the comedian has written. "They are Satan's minions and the TRUE symbol of evil."
He might be surprised, then, by a new study that found that black bears - the most common bears in North America - have killed only 63 people in the United States and Canada over the last 109 years.
Revelstoke Bear Aware Community Coordinator Janette Vickers has been working with Ron Larsen and Jeff Bolingbroke at Parks Canada to create a Google Earth Map to view bear sightings on the Revelstoke Bear Aware website, www.revelstokebearaware.org. The Google Earth Map is an interactive tool for residents to view bear sightings and associated bear attractants in our community. Currently, the map includes reported bear sightings for 2009, 2010 and our first bear sighting of 2011 on April 23rd.
CODY, Wyo. — Andy Pils keeps a small office at the Wapiti district ranger station, although he doesn’t spend much time here among the filing cabinets and computer monitors.
More often than not, the wildlife biologist is out on the Shoshone National Forest, offering bear safety tips to backcountry visitors or assisting other agencies with bear relocation.
Whether you're an educator, resident, scientist or wildlife officer, as someone who cares about bears, it's your job to spread the bear smart word - choosing your words carefully. Words are powerful. They can find their way deep into the very fabric of our being and belief systems, shaping our thoughts and actions. Words influence our perceptions and affect attitudes. They can inspire and encourage the right behaviour; or hinder and create apathy and inaction.
As grizzly bears venture out of their dens in Western and Northern Canada, the world will appear to them much as it did the spring before: snow on the ground, stomachs empty, the promise of winterkilled meat to scavenge and the perils of living cheek-by-jowl with an ever-expanding human footprint of growing rural towns, mines, pipelines and roads.
They will not know that they are once again under a national microscope that will determine the fate of them and their progeny.
Despite what seems like the renewal of winter this week, Whistler residents are being asked to prepare for the awakening of the local black bear population.
The emergence from hibernation comes at the same time the municipality has received funding to hire a Bear Aware community coordinator for Whistler. This is the fifth year that the B.C. Conservation Foundation has subsidized a community coordinator position in Whistler.
They’re awake and crawling out of their dens looking for food, any food: the tender green shoots of plants reaching for the warm spring sun as well as bugs, bark and carcasses of animals that didn’t make it through the winter.
And garbage.
For some black bears, especially those living in green spaces and forests around the Tri-Cities, humans’ garbage is as good as anything because they aren’t picky eaters. They’ll eat the plastic wrap off a stale chocolate bar.
Prince George, B.C. - The City of Prince George has three steps to complete before it can be certified as a "Bear Smart" community.
Bears are not uncommon sites in Prince George, in fact, last year, Conservation Officers received 1925 calls about bears in the community and attended 310. Of that number, 86 black bears and one grizzly were destroyed, and one black bear was relocated.
Officials in Kamloops, as well as other cities on the fringe of wild areas, encourage homeowners to keep garbage indoors in order to deter bears.
In the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains in Montana, it's not quite so simple. And rather than just black bears, the population includes bigger and wilder grizzlies.
But the concept of keeping people and bears safe, by keeping them apart, is the same.
The Get Bear Smart Society is working to record — and reduce — the number of wildlife deaths on regional highways.
Dawn Johnson, project coordinator for the society, explained that although there were 10 confirmed bear deaths on local highways in 2010, the number might be much higher. The society is putting out a call to the public to report any past incidents of vehicle collisions with animals.
As part of journalism’s commitment to truth and justice by providing a diversity of relevant points of view, journalists have an obligation to provide the perspective of nonhuman animals in everyday stories that influence the animals’ and our lives. This essay provides justification and guidance on why and how this can be accomplished, recommending that, when writing about nonhuman animals or issues, journalists should: (1) observe, listen to, and communicate with animals and convey this information to audiences via detailed descriptions and audiovisual media, (2) interpret nonhuman animal behavior and communication to provide context and meaning, and (3) incorporate the animals’ stories and perspectives, and consider what is in their best interest. To fairly balance animal-industry sources and the anthropocentric biases that are traditionally inherent in news requires that journalists select less objectifying language and more appropriate human sources without a vested interest in how animals are used.
What in the world is happening to our planet and why? We live in a wounded world that is in dire need of healing. We all should be troubled and terrified by what we have done and continue to do. Humans have made huge and horrific global messes that need to be repaired now. The overriding sense of turmoil is apparent to anyone who takes the time to pay attention. Researchers and non-researchers alike are extremely concerned about unprecedented global losses of biodiversity and how humans suffer because of our destructive ways. We are animals and we should be proud and aware of our membership in the animal kingdom. However, our unique contribution to the decimation of the planet and its many life forms demeans us.
Nine bears destroyed, 10 more killed in vehicle accidents
Bears breaking into homes! Drunks chasing bears up trees! Bears stealing groceries!
It's been a busy year for the Conservation Officers Service - which only has four people working the entire Sea to Sky region - which has seen the number of bear deaths and human-bear conflicts rise since 2009.
No bears were killed last year; nine have been destroyed in 2010, mostly for entering people's homes.
Another 10 bears have been killed in vehicular accidents this year. The Conservation Officer Service has received just over 800 calls in 2010 so far, and had made about 185 responses.
Young people on the island seem prepared to live safely with bears.
All students at Bowen Island Community School, Island Pacific School and the Discovery Learning Centre attended a "Living In Bear Country" presentation at BICS on November 22.
Crystal McMillan, executive director of the Bear Smart BC Society showed a short video about black bears, and the problems they can cause when they get used to living with humans, and then quizzed the students about what they've learned.
Revelstoke Bear Aware has provided the following update on their 2010 season in the following media release
Janette Vickers, Revelstoke Bear Aware Coordinator
2010 was a very busy year for bears in and around Revelstoke, with sightings reported in every neighbourhood. There were a total of 206 calls made to the Provincial Problem Wildlife phone line and to the Revelstoke Bear Aware phone line, compared with 42 calls in 2009. All of the calls and reports made this year were concerning black bears. Revelstoke Bear Aware encourages reporting of all bear sightings to determine where to focus the Bear Aware message.
The authors believe that communication within and among agency personnel in the United States and Canada about the successes and failures of their human-bear (Ursidae) management programs will increase the effectiveness of these programs and of bear research. To communicate more effectively, they suggest agencies clearly define terms and concepts used in human-bear management and use them in a consistent manner. They constructed a human-bear management lexicon of terms and concepts using a modified Delphi method to provide a resource that facilitates more effective communication among human-bear management agencies.
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