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All Whistler Articles
Community members and black bear advocates continued the discussion about local bears and Whistler's garbage disposal system at an open house held Wednesday (Dec. 1) at the library.
Waste disposal for residents without cars was a focus of the session, with attendees brainstorming ideas. Garbage-disposal carpooling, disposing of waste at work, increased composting, larger numbers of household garbage disposal units, educating newcomers and using a bus to access the two compactor sites were suggested.
The same bear that was tranquilized and removed from a tree behind the Marketplace B.C. Liquor Store on Nov. 17 has been euthanized following further conflict, officials confirmed Tuesday (Nov. 23).
“It had been around the Village for a couple of weeks and was given a relocation with the hope that it would go to den and not come back to the Village area,” said Sgt. Chris Doyle of the B.C. Conservation Officer Service (COS). “It did return to the Village area a couple days later and it was re-captured.”
A crowd of some 60 people watched on Wednesday (Nov. 17) watched as conservation officers, police and fire crews tranquilized and relocated a bear from a tree behind the B.C. Liquor Store in Marketplace.
It wasn't the first time this year that such action was necessary in that location. A few weeks back, a similar incident occurred - with a similar-sized crowd on hand to watch. Clearly, Whistler residents and resort guests have a keen interest in the local bear population, and given the chance, most of us would change our daily routines to ensure their protection.
Re: Sylvia Dolson's letter to the editor (Get Bear Smart, Pique Oct. 14)
I fully appreciate Dolson's concern for our local bears and support her goals of preventing their habituation to human activity and their deaths as a result. However, I am concerned that some of the solutions proposed at various public meetings, namely neighbourhood waste collection bins, come at the price of other sustainability goals.
Waste collection in the neighbourhoods will increase our municipal costs, and at what benefit? One estimate for a subsidized trial was $80,000 for one neighbourhood and it may not solve our bear attractant issues.
I like to walk the Valley Trail around Whistler Golf Course, usually you'll see me out there twice a day enjoying myself. Whistler Golf Course has graciously opened its pathway to the public now that they have closed for the season, with a few obvious requests, the most obvious is that you leash your bloody dog.
This morning (Friday) I was out for a walk, again, and again some buffoon was out walking his two dogs, one small black dog and the other a black and white long haired sheep-type dog, off leash. The dogs were harassing every squirrel as they made their way along the path and the owner was completely ignoring their abusive behaviour towards the wildlife.
The B.C. Ministry of Environment has suggested the Village of Pemberton work toward becoming a Bear Smart community as per a provincial conservation program, Pemberton council revealed at its Tuesday (Nov. 2) meeting.
A report released Tuesday looking at ways the community can reduce human-bear conflicts stated the ministry's large carnivore specialist, Tony Hamilton, made the recommendation to the Village, which would need to meet a set of criteria to officially become a Bear Smart community.
The fall season is always a tough one for local bears with berry crops disappearing but no snow yet to force hibernation. Human/bear conflicts are common and sometimes result in the death of bears that have turned to human food and present a danger to the public.
Yet that wasn't the case Thursday, Oct. 14. The RCMP got a call in the early afternoon that a bear had been treed between the Marketplace and Whistler Health Care Centre. Someone had chased the bear after it attempted to enter the underground parking area at the clinic.
Just south of Function (past the overpass for the railway tracks) on the right hand side of the road (heading south), there is a little section of the old highway that people are continually driving into to get a better look at the little bear that feeds there.
Yesterday there were two cars parked there with the people outside of their vehicle and the one couple even had their dog outside the vehicle as well. This is total disregard for the poor little bear and it made me very angry. Unfortunately I was on my way to work heading northbound and therefore couldn't turn across the highway to speak to these people.
While Castlegar continues to tackle its bear problem, one Kootenay man says he has the solution – one he knows works.
Casey Black, owner of Northern Lights Wildlife in Golden, said Karelian Bear Dogs teach bears to stay away from populated areas.
“If you capture a bear in town or somewhere … you release it where you catch it,” Black explained. “Outside the trap you have three dogs, and you chase the bear with the dogs. When the bear gets to a certain point you stop the chase. That tells the bear that it’s a territorial dispute and not an attack. Once you’ve done it twice, the bear won’t come back.”
Ronnie Cully heads to the hills for a hot date during an exhilarating trip to British Columbia.
Not many things can get me up at 5.45 on a Sunday morning. An alarm clock is one. The prospect of a game of golf is another. This time, it’s the promise of a meeting with a lady. Elly is no ordinary lady, though. She weighs around 25 stones and will be dressed only in a fur coat.
I am going to need a little help locating her, which is why I am standing at the foot of the Blackcomb Mountain in the ski resort of Whistler, Canada, at a time of day when most holidaymakers are still sleeping off the excesses of the night before.
Myths about bears abound. Some are widespread and some are more local and specific to Whistler. Either way, it is interesting to me how attached people become to their bear myths — I suppose they are more entertaining than the truth sometimes. I’m not sure how some of these myths got started, but this article is my attempt to put at least some of them to rest.
• Myth 1: Bears can’t run downhill.
• Fact: People seem to think that a bear’s front legs are too short (or back legs are too long in relation to their front legs) to run downhill and they just tumble.
Oct 14, 2010 — Media Coverage: Get bear smart
I'm becoming increasingly distressed about the number of bears that are being killed in Whistler (seven so far this year) - a community that's been working on becoming bear smart for over a decade. How can we allow this to happen?
Is the provincial government, who is charged with taking care of wildlife in B.C. responsible? Or is it our local municipal government? Is it the community? Or, is it all three? The Whistler Bear Working Group (BWG), which is comprised of many stakeholders like the Get Bear Smart Society (GBS), the RMOW, Conservation Officer Service, RCMP, Carney's Waste Systems and Whistler Blackcomb all work together to manage human-bear conflicts. But this is not a problem that the Bear Working Group or any of its partners can solve alone. It takes a community to build a bear smart movement. YOU are ultimately a vital part of the solution. Each and every one of us.
Dear Editor,
Re. “’Very habituated,’ Whistler bear shot, killed,’” Question, Sept. 30.
Hey you who live in Whistler! The bears were there thousands of years before your arrival!
Back in the 1950s some of us had lean-to-style shelters there, plenty of “bears,” but no conflict as the humans were no competition at the time.
Diversification, not unlike sustainability, is one of those concepts easier to grasp than execute. And almost impossible to argue against......
........The second idea I've floated before and was frankly very disappointed no one took seriously. Imagine? But once again this year, we've killed a number of bears for no better reason than they liked human garbage and we're too unimaginative to do anything other than kill them for it. C'mon people. This is a country that doesn't have the death penalty. Are we really that lame? Is shooting bears the best we can come up with?
Conservation officers had to kill an eighth bear this season in Whistler after the animal got into a house in Creekside on Saturday (Oct. 2), during another busy week for bear activity in the Whistler area.
Sgt. Chris Doyle of the B.C. Conservation Officer Service said a call came in on Saturday about a bear having gotten into the kitchen in a Creekside home, while the residents were also in the house.
A brown young-adult female black bear uses her forepaw to steady a huckleberry stem while slurping succulent berries through loose, floppy lips. The critical high elevation (1,500-1,700 metres) Vaccinium (huckleberry and blueberry) crop is now peaking as of Sept. 14. Berries are scattered but overall consistently available across most mountain slopes.
Bears are working more to consume berries: more moving than consuming but established resident adult bears, including most cubs and sub-adult bears, are gaining weight.
In a season that has seen a weak natural berry crop force bears into urban areas around the Sea to Sky region, ursine issues in Pemberton have been attracting attention and comments from concerned community members and advocates.
Dawn Johnson, Pemberton area resident and program co-ordinator for the Whistler based Get Bear Smart Society, has written twice to the Village of Pemberton council in recent months about bear-related issues. She said she’s felt spurred to comment by her increased awareness of a seeming lack of progress in regards to securing the area’s bear attractants.
Hungry bruins keeping conservation officers busy in Whistler
Officers shot and killed a "very habituated" female black bear in the municipal works compound on Nesters Road last week.
The bear, known to researchers as Phyllis, had a long history of getting into conflict situations, Sgt. Chris Doyle of the B.C. Conservation Officer Service said on Monday (Sept. 27). She was first collared "several years ago" in the area near the old landfill, he said.
The Get Bear Smart Society and the Whistler Black Bear Working Group (WBBWG) would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Carney's Waste Systems. Carney's have gone above and beyond the call of garbage duty.
A black bear in Whistler, B.C., was so intent on getting at a few tomatoes growing in a window box that he climbed a three-storey condominium building to get them.
The bear made the climb Thursday morning as a stunned resident of the Whistler Creekside condominium complex on Gondola Way scrambled to get his video camera to record the feat.
The bear used his claws and teeth to get a grip on the vinyl siding, working his way up the corner of the building to a third-floor balcony where he plundered the small crop of tomatoes.
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