Late summer is a bountiful time of year. If you’re finding yourself overwhelmed by the productivity of your orchard or garden, Northern Lights Wildlife Society could use your help.
“We need apples fruits and veggies because we have 25 baby bears in care right now and there’s likely to be more coming,” says Society founder Angelika Langen. “They’re in pre-hibernation mode – they eat non-stop. They eat incredible amounts of food as they’re growing at the same time.”
Langen says they’re looking for unprocessed fruits and veggies to help feed their furry charges. And if you’re cleaning out your freezer in preparation for this year’s harvest, Langen says they’ll take frozen meat and fish as well as long as it too is unprocessed. You can contact Northern Lights to arrange for a pick up. Unfortunately, they don’t have the resources to pick the fruit from your trees but if you can box it yourself, they’ll be happy to collect it.
Leaving fresh food lying around your yard is a sure way to attract bears.
“Be proactive, start cleaning up now,” says Dave Bakker with Northern Bear Awareness. “Clean up your windfalls, anything that’s fallen off the trees. Harvest your food as soon as it’s ripe, don’t wait for the bears to show up. Chances are, if you had a bear in your tree last year, they don’t forget. They’ll be back.”
Bakker says there are several options for those who need to clear their yards and gardens. Getting in touch with Northern Lights Wildlife Society to make a donation is one of them.
“A lot of the fruit that’s falling right now isn’t ripe yet. We have a working agreement with the winery that we’ll try and supply them with as much fruit as we can but the winery can only take fruit that’s ripe. One of the options [for unripe fruit] is, there’s a lot of farmers that have livestock in town.”
Bakker recommends contacting local farms before simply showing up with unwanted produce. There’s also the Prince George Fruit Exchange for those who need help clearing their trees.
“You can put a posting on there. We’re trying to collect as much as we can. We do have a local farmer that does take some of the fall down right now but our demand is really high.”
If you like picking fruit and have some extra time on your hands, Northern Bear Awareness is always looking for volunteers.
The next few months are key for bears, who go into a stage known as hyperphagia – literally overeating – as they try to gain enough fat to get through the winter. Bakker says it’s important to keep attractants to a minimum, even as the weather gets colder.
“There’s a big misconception that as soon as the snow flies,the bears run and hide. That’s not true. Bears have to gain 30% of their body weight to survive the winter months. A 100 lb bear needs 30 lbs of fat. They will keep eating also as long as food is available.”
Northern Lights Wildlife Rescue will be in need of food donations for the next few months at least as they support their charges into their first hibernation.
“Each bear eats on average, about 20lbs of fruit and vegetables a day and then we add to that meat and fish,” says Langen. “Things usually start to slow down by the end of September middle of October and then the food supply will be reduced because in nature, it would be the same.”
She says they also typically take in another 20 bears in the fall and the animals are usually in such poor condition that they’re unable to hibernate and need to be fed through the winter months.
This year’s bear rescue numbers are already more than double the Society’s average so they could be looking at a very busy fall.
Something going on in the Prince George area you think people should know about?
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