Ping ... ping ... ping. The radio receiver guides us with the slow, methodical rhythm of a submarine's sonar. As we drive into Creekside, one of several subdivisions that comprise the Resort Municipality of Whistler, B.C., the sound gets louder. The radio-collared bear is close.

Biologist Lori Homstol is looking for Oval, a young black bear with a history of hanging out where he doesn't belong.

''I'm guessing he's in that backyard right there," says Homstol, who is wrap­ping up three years of research on how effective negative stimuli - cracker shells, rubber bullets, her barking dog ­are at teaching black bears to stay away from people and communities.

She points to a large, overflowing garbage bin beside a condominium com­plex. "It's actually full of recycling, but people throw their pizza boxes in there, and the bears love the grease."

I follow her around the end of the fence, bear spray in hand. Oval is lying in the garden, a pizza box beneath his paws.

"Go on, get outta here!" shouts Homstol as she approaches, clapping her hands and yelling. Oval is nonplussed. When Homstol gets within 10 metres, he scampers up a nearby tree and jumps the fence like a big, fat cat, loping casually into the forest.

Two months later, Oval was shot and killed by a conservation officer after breaking into a Whistler house - a story that's all too common in North America, the continent are reporting dramatic increases in human-bear encounters.

In British Columbia, for instance, there were fewer than 8,000 complaints in 1992 and nearly 12,000 in 1998.

The reason is simple. More and more people are living, working and holidaying in bear habitat, increasing the likelihood, and often the severity, of human-bear encounters. Black bears are becoming increasingly comfortable cruising our backyards and alleyways, our landfills and golf courses, in search of easy high-calorie meals, especially in the fall.

Whistler is a prime example of both the problem and the solution. Ten thou­sand residents and two million annual visitors share the Whistler Valley with about 100 black bears. Designed to integrate into the natural environment rather than dominate it, the town sprawls through prime bear habitat, and modifi­cations made to build Whistler's world­class ski resort have resulted in an abundance of bear food such as berries and clover.

Most human-bear conflicts occur not on the ski hill but in the townsite, where, despite an enormous amount of progress over the past decade, bears still get into residents' garbage. While garbage cans

used to be the biggest source of the problem, most waste containers are now reasonably bear-proof But locals without vehicles have no way to access the centrally located depot sites, which means they either stockpile garbage in their homes or ditch it in the nearby woods, where bears inevitably find it.

"In Whistler, most conflict kills are a result of bears entering occupied struc­tures - homes or places of work ­because they are considered to be a human safety risk," says Sylvia Dolson, executive director of the Whistler-based Get Bear Smart Society.

Olympic officials are probably thankful that this summer was relatively peaceful, in large part because of a healthy berry crop. But Dolson says it's also because there aren't as many bears around: in 2007 and 2008, 30 or so bears were either relo­cated or killed, including a frightened sub adult male that nipped an Australian tourist after being surrounded by a horde of late-night revellers in the central square.

Whistler needs to develop a bear-proof waste-management system that's easy to reach from every home, says Dolson. And it must continue "enhancing" bear habitat outside town, where flora that bears eat, such as mountain ash, is being planted.

The Whistler approach is worth watch­ing. With public sentiment increasingly against shooting food-conditioned bears, communities across North America are going to have to get bear smart to keep bear populations healthy and people safe.