NOTE: This section is geared toward professional wildlife managers. It is not intended for the general public.

Hundreds of black bears are killed every year in British Columbia as nuisance animals, and increasingly the public is asking for non-lethal methods from wildlife managers, especially near resort communities and protected areas. As a resort community and host of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, Whistler is under increased pressure from residents, visitors and the general public to reduce the number of bears killed annually due to conflicts with people. The Resort Municipality of Whistler has adopted a number of policies including changes to by-laws and garbage management, in an effort to reduce human-bear conflicts, under the provincial Bear Smart program. The Ministry of Environment sponsored research into non-lethal bear management at Whistler, for broad applicability across the province under the direction of the Whistler Black Bear Working Group.

During our second year of research (2006), we captured 3 female and 7 male black bears with a conflict history, or a suspected conflict history. We released bears at the capture site if possible, and gave them a "hard release" (with pain stimuli from beanbag rounds and rubber bullets) if they had a known conflict history. If the capture site was not suitable for release, we released bears within their estimated home range.

We monitored bears from early April to early December by using ground radio telemetry, and fitted four subadult males with Lotek 4400S GPS collars. Two collars had hourly relocation schedules, and two collars had 20 minute relocation schedules. Additionally, we located collared bears 600 times and conducted 285 hazing and aversive conditioning events. Reports from the Conservation Officer Service, the public, and our data totalled 389 human-bear conflict incidents. We also describe denning habitat, and approximate dates when bears entered their dens for the winter.

Neither aversive conditioning nor hazing seemed to have an affect on bears' conflict levels, although bears did respond differently to pain stimuli from rubber bullets than they did to human dominance techniques. We discuss the potential reasons for this from a behavioural perspective considering principles for effective punishment and theories of how animals learn. In consideration of these theories and our preliminary results, we describe a revised experimental design for 2007.

Bear Aversion Research Team Goals and Objectives

Our 6-year research project will examine the efficacy of non-lethal negative conditioning in a highly modified human-dominated landscape. Ideally, non-lethal behavioural modification techniques would be applied to prevent food-conditioning. Bears approaching a relatively attractant-free urban area or neighbourhood would be prevented from obtaining any food rewards and would lose motivation to frequent developed areas. However, the reality of many years of food conditioning by resident animals becomes even more apparent as communities throughout British Columbia progress towards becoming Bear Smart. Some Whistler black bears already exhibit high levels of food conditioning. Our research will cover the transition period from somewhat restricted human food and garbage availability to extensive attractant control. We do not yet know whether non-lethal techniques can reverse the behaviour of conflict bears with a variety of levels of food-conditioning as attractants become limited. Previous work by others suggests this will be difficult with food-conditioned bears (Hastings 1980, McCarthy and Seavoy 1994, Morrison 2004, Greenleaf 2005), or that results are short-lived (Beckman 2004, Leigh 2007). While aversive conditioning may not reduce conflict behaviour, we wonder if it can increase wariness and prevent conflict behaviour in bears that are human-habituated.

Many Whistler black bears are highly human-habituated. This habituation is perhaps in part from a combination of commercial tourist activities in Whistler and on the surrounding two mountains: activities such as bear viewing tours, ATVs tours, guided hikes, and extensive mountain bike traffic on Whistler. As an example, during an economic impact study in 2006 from June 4 to Sept 17, counts of mountain bike riders in Whistler were as follows: the Lost Lake trailhead near the Village was the busiest spot with 15,315 riders during the study period, followed by Rainbow Parking Lot at the west end of town with 4,590. Comfortably Numb north of town had 3,630 riders, while Function Junction at the south end had 2,175. During the same period the Bike Park reported 76,671 riders (Mountain Bike Touring Association 2007). We are interested in investigating whether bears can be taught to avoid humans on a very site-specific basis, particularly when natural forage is available and seasonally attractive. There is some evidence that habituation in coastal brown bears may be site-specific (Smith et al 2005).

Our project will refine existing information on movement patterns, travel corridors and critical habitats to assist the implementation of Whistler's Protected Area Network (PAN), the Community Forest and other local initiatives. We also believe that our work will support the objectives of Whistler's 2020 Sustainability Plan and that it will provide useful information for the community as it prepares for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Ultimately, our project will deliver operational guidelines on non-lethal management of black bears for use in other Bear Smart communities in British Columbia, and potentially elsewhere across North America.

The ultimate goal of our research is to determine black bear responses to non-lethal negative conditioning techniques with specific objectives to:
- capture, radio-collar and monitor a representative sample of black bears in the community and determine their patterns of human interaction
- increase the understanding of links between food availability (both natural and non-natural) and bear conflict behaviour
- document age- and sex-specific behavioural, physical and reproductive responses to non-lethal aversive conditioning applied in a range of urban to suburban situations on bears with varying degrees of food-conditioning and human habituation
- determine how different external factors (e.g. amount of rewards received) affect behavioural responses to non-lethal aversive conditioning
- determine the operational feasibility of application of a full suite of non-lethal tools, ranging from simple hazing to full aversive conditioning
- experiment with new and innovative aversive/non-lethal conditioning methodology
- contribute to the identification of practical thresholds of attractant availability in urban and suburban settings

This report outlines the results from the Whistler Aversive Conditioning and Monitoring program. Download full report for 2006. Download full report for 2005.

Download: Applications of Aversive Conditioning to Black Bears in Conflict with Humans - presented at the International Bear Association Conference in Monterrey, Mexico, 2007.