It’s an unfortunate reality.
While 300 bear-resistant garbage bins were deployed in a neighbourhood in Hart just last week, the Northern Bear Awareness Society says it’s just one small area to an otherwise large issue here in the Northern Capital.
“These containers, they’re covering a very small area of a very highly conflicted area,” Dave Bakker, President of the Northern Bear Awareness Society, told MyPGNow.
He adds that the area was selected after studying some of the city’s “hotspots” when it comes to reports being made, but added that there likely wasn’t a single area that would have been a bad area to select given the fact that bear sightings have been reported throughout the entire city.
With bears being an intelligent animal, they return to where they know food sources are, which is what results in bears coming into the city as natural food sources (greens and berries) begin growing in the greenbelt following the winter months. As Bakker states, there have been some cases where bears will actually wake up from hibernation to feed in the city, only to then return to their dens and sleep more.
On average, 32 bears are killed each year in Prince George. This comes as a result of them unsuccessfully being rehabbed back to their natural eating habits after becoming used to feeding off of garbage and other unnatural sources.
“We’re finding that a lot of residents, even though they’ve had conflicts in their neighbourhoods over the years, they always seem to be waiting until it happens before they decide to take action,” said Bakker.
The Northern Bear Awareness Society states that by being proactive in ensuring possible attractants are dealt with, it will make bears move on and search for food elsewhere.
In theory, it would also cut down on the total number of bears needing to be euthanized as a result of their dependence on unnatural food sources.
“I can’t stress enough, don’t wait for it to happen because it’s already too late,” says Bakker.
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