Executive Summary
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.
