“I heard a noise in the carport and I thought it was a dog. When I went to check it turned out to be a bear, about 12 feet away, going through the garbage. I was shocked.”
On July 22 Phillip van Niekirk experienced a bear “interaction” at his home in North Vancouver. In this case, the animal entered his carport.
Other people have actually had bears enter their homes and wander through the premises, opening fridge doors in the kitchen and dragging out food. It’s a trend that local bear experts say has taken an ominous turn that may produce an unhappy ending.
“We live several blocks from the nearest woods at Princess Park,” says van Niekirk, “and the only way the bear could get from there to our house was by walking down the street. What’s shocking was this happened in broad daylight at high noon. If any kids were about, they would have come face to face with it.”
According to van Niekirk, the bear completely ignored him, ripped the tops off his garbage cans and lounged comfortably on his front lawn, enjoying a lazy lunch before casually wandering off five minutes later.
“It looks like bears have lost their fear of people,” says van Niekirk. “We’ve been here 12 years and never seen anything like it.”
Are bears losing their fear of people? North Shore bear expert Tony Webb of the North Shore Black Bear Network (www.northshorebears.com) seems to think so. The word he uses to describe such recent bear behaviour is “habituated,” but a scarier word he also uses is “addicted.” Just like drug addicts, it appears that bears can’t help themselves after they develop a bad habit.
Their addiction is based on simple science; recent lab analysis has proved that urban bears snacking on human food have much higher protein content than their rural cousins. A bigger and stronger bear is a successful bear but also a dangerous bear, especially when many have come to consider humans as happy to share their food. That means that bears are now equating people as equals. This is not a healthy situation, either for bears or people.
“Currently, reports of human/bear interaction on the North Shore show that 80 per cent of the problems are caused by garbage, eight per cent by fruit trees, and six per cent by bird feeders, which are high in protein,” says Webb. “Berry bushes cause three per cent of problems and compost about one or to per cent, but the compost problem is growing because people are being urged to do it. We estimate about 80 per cent of people know better than to leave any garbage about, but that still leaves a lot that don’t. And there are those that can’t be bothered to do anything.”
Webb estimates there are about 40 bears on the North Shore. The black bear population is growing throughout the province, thanks to logging opening up clearings that grow bear-type of food. There’s also an awful lot of garbage around towns and cities. According to wildlife biologists, an abundance of food at lower elevations in recent years has produced a population boom in the black bear population, which is causing bears to change their feeding behaviours.
Summer is breeding season which means bears are hungry for calories, but the problem accelerates in fall when the bears go into hyperphagia, consuming large quantities of food in preparation for hibernation, often eating up to 20,000 calories a day.
Despite an ongoing education program for over a decade, the Bear Network finds that people are still leaving lots of food around. Now, even the fridge is not safe if the door to the house is left unlocked.
“Bears are much smarter than we give them credit for,” says Webb. “They have the highest brain to body ration of any mammal, so they can learn to open doors. They even know what days of the week are garbage days so they will wait in advance of the truck. They seem to have a built-in GPS system; the problem bear destroyed in West Vancouver this summer was tagged and relocated all the way to the Elaho Valley yet found his way back. They know where the good food is.”
It’s the addiction issue that has Webb worried. Just like human beings, bears find it almost impossible to change their behaviour patterns once ingrained. There are no rehab centres for urban black bears. Once they cross a certain line, like entering houses or showing no fear for human beings, they can be shot.
The North Shore receives the highest number of bear calls in the entire province. Section 88.1 of the B.C. criminal code makes it an offence to leave out food, food waste, compost or other waste or garbage that could attract dangerous wildlife but enforcement is difficult. There are only 90 conservation officers in the entire province and only three in the Lower Mainland, and they have many other duties besides attending to problem bears.
“Shooting bears sends out a very negative message, especially to youth,” says Webb. “It shows we are an intolerant species and that we don’t know any better way to deal with our problem than to use violence.”
Webb suggests people log on to the bear website and find out what they can do to make their property bear-proof. He also suggest buying a 120-litre Rollins Schaefer bin, a two-wheeled, hard-plastic garbage can outfitted with heavy-duty clasps around the lid, recently issued to all residents in Port Moody. Coquitlam has made the bins available to its residents at a cost of $140 per bin and Mayor Richard Stewart is calling for fines of up to $10,000 for residents who don’t obey bear attractant bylaws.
As for van Niekirk, he is considering buying a sturdier bin himself. He doesn’t want any bears to get shot, and more importantly, he doesn’t want to see any people get killed either.
“I think the bears have lost their fear of people. When a bear strolls down the street in a city in the middle of the day, you know things are not the way they used to be.”
To learn more about bears or report an interaction, contact the North Shore Bear Hotline at 604-990-BEAR (2327 In an emergency phone the Provincial Call Centre at 1-800-663-9453.
