A Sunshine Coast bear advocate believes there are more bears around this year than usual, and says municipalities should be doing more to prevent conflicts between these amazing animals and humans - including handing out bear-proof garbage bins.
After viewing a very large, very well-fed black bear right outside my own North Shore bedroom Monday, I tend to agree.
Did I say amazing? Yes, Gerald Shaffer, founder of the Sunshine Coast Bear Education and Resource (BEAR) Network, thinks bears are highly intelligent.
Indeed, Shaffer told me he recently heard reports of a bear from Gibsons that had learned to open a few doors, including that of a car parked in a local garage. Unfortunately, it got trapped inside. And that was when Clint and Irene Davy from the Gibsons Wildlife Rehab Centre were called in.
Davy said Tuesday he was alerted by the property owner's son, and soon realized it was a large mother bear that had got stuck inside a Toyota hatchback.
"She somehow managed to get a door open and get into the car," he said. "But the door swung shut behind her."
Davy didn't want to open the hatchback by hand as the bear, weighing several hundred pounds, might burst out and make mincemeat of him.
"Obviously, I knew the bear was quite frantic about trying to get out, because the car was bumping up and down and the windows were all steamed up," he said, adding she'd be anxious to get back to her cub.
So Davy prepared a long stick with a screw at the end, drove his own van alongside the hatchback and, with the van window open as little as possible, gingerly unlatched the Toyota's tailgate. "We saw the bear's snout appear from under the opening," he said.
"And then all a sudden, boom, the door flew up in the air and the bear came barrelling out, turned around and looked at us and took off."
How long was the bear in the vehicle? Davy doesn't know. But it was long enough for it to trash the Toyota.
Both Davy and Shaffer, a 42-year-old entrepreneur, are passionate about bears. I like them, too. Which is why I was both amazed and alarmed at seeing such a large one lumbering up my back steps. I mean, what if we'd met halfway?
Shaffer says mature male black bears tend to mind their own business. But fearful people tend to call the conservation officers, who shoot them. The solution is obvious: We have to stop feeding the bears.
"We are increasing the population of bears through the amount of food we have in our garbage," Shaffer said.
"We are actually creating the problem that we're trying to fix. So we feed the bears with the one hand and we shoot them with the other."
Municipalities, he added, should give ratepayers bear-proof garbage containers, which would pay for themselves within a year.
Shaffer encounters bears daily on his Roberts Creek property. But he doesn't worry about them, even though he has two little children, as bears so rarely kill people. Besides, there are so many other things to worry about.
I totally agree.
