InFocus Magazine

The year 2015 was a bad one for the bears who live and roam near the village of Cumberland. During last year’s bear season, seven black bears were destroyed within the village by conservation officers who were responding to calls by residents. The bears were destroyed because they had discovered that hunting for food in an urban environment is much easier than doing so in the wild. Unfortunately, that discovery led to their demise.

Cumberland resident Andrea Townsend became intimately aware of the problem last year when a bear was shot and killed directly outside her home. “Coming home from work I noticed a bear trap across from my house,” she says, recalling that day. The bear trap held the remains of a mother bear. I learned that her body was placed in the trap as bait, as her two bear cubs were still up in the cedar tree. After the trauma of witnessing their mother be killed they refused to come down, so the decision was made to wait overnight to see if the bear cubs would be lured into the trap to be with the body of their mother.”

Townsend recalls what ensued: “All night the mother bear’s body lay in the trap and during the early hours my partner and I were woken by a loud metal slam as the trap door fell shut. For hours the bear cubs were trapped with their mother’s body. The sound they made can still bring me to tears. It was the most heartbreaking, morose, traumatizing sound of animals in distress. We didn’t know what to do. All we knew was that our hearts were breaking as we lay there listening to them hour after hour— helpless to assist them. Later that morning I went over to the trap to see them. They were both curled up on their mother’s body. One looked up at me and we looked into each other’s eyes. I was horrified. I couldn’t believe this was the official way to deal with Cumberland’s bears.”

Townsend was further horrified to learn the plan for the cubs. “I asked the conservation officer what was going to happen to the cubs,” she says. “They were so small that I believed they would be taken to a rehabilitation centre until they were big enough to be on their own. The conservation officer informed me that since they were witnessed being led to garbage and seen eating it they are now ‘garbage bears’ and as such can never be rehabilitated. They would be destroyed.”

For Townsend and a handful of other local residents, including the mayor, Leslie Baird, knowing that bears were being destroyed in the village was an unacceptable situation. Like Townsend, Baird had also witnessed a bear being destroyed right outside her home.

“It was a terrible thing to witness,” Baird says. “I didn’t want to ever see something like that again. I also knew that Cumberland Rotary, Lush Valley, and Village council members were very concerned about what was happening with the bears in our village. So as mayor, I asked everyone to come together to see about working as a group to find a solution.”

From that initial meeting the Cumberland Bear Initiative was formed to promote bear awareness and lessen the number of bears killed in Cumberland due to human caused problems.

In Cumberland, many local residents have realized that to live in harmony with the local bear population, it isn’t the bears that need to change their behavior—it’s the people. “This is a people issue,” says Baird. “The bears are only doing what comes naturally.”

Vancouver Island is home to approximately 7,000 black bears, one of the densest bear populations in the world. This is definitely bear country. Furthermore, the Village of Cumberland sits within the Vancouver Island black bear population’s main migratory route. As a result, village residents have always seen black bears roaming through town. However, 2015 was an unusual year, with more bears reported and more bears destroyed.

Michele Jones, a local biologist who has worked in the area for the past two decades, has noticed a change in how local bear populations move around during the bear season.

“Essentially, people are spreading out, and when we do that, we reduce the habitat available to wildlife,” says Jones, referring to why she believes the anticipated movements of the black bear populations are shifting—not just in our Valley but throughout BC.

“Large animals require a large habitat. And when food is scarce, large animals require an even larger habitat in order to survive. Weird weather and shrinking available habitat has changed how much food is available to the bears.”

Essentially, humans are taking up more space, either from urbanization or from resource extraction. In addition, unseasonably warm temperatures decrease the amount of food available to bears. Dry summers like last year’s scorcher means there is less food for the bears. No rain often means no berries. When food scarcity occurs, the bears migrate to lower elevations in search of food.

And there’s the rub. According to the official Conservation Officers Services website, “A fed bear is a dead bear. Most people are not aware of their role in the destruction of bears. If humans allow bears to access non-natural food sources such as garbage, they help to create ‘problem’ bears. In most cases, ‘problem’ bears must be destroyed because they damage property and are a potential threat to human safety. Every year hundreds of ‘problem’ bears are killed in BC as a result of poor human management of non-natural food sources.”

Understandably, it’s difficult to admit that we are the cause of the bear problem. Instead, some citizens blame the conservation officers for the fact that the bears are being destroyed. They perceive the conservation officers as coming into the village with guns blazing, but that’s not a fair assessment. In fact, when conservation officers are forced to kill problem bears it causes them anxiety and stress.

According to their website, “During bear season, conservation officers respond to thousands of calls and complaints about bears. Most of these problems begin when people allow bears to access non-natural food sources. Conservation officers spend a great deal of time educating people about ‘problem’ bears, but the problems still persist.

Unfortunately, because there are few alternative control methods, conservation officers are usually forced to kill ‘problem’” bears. This creates stress for the conservation officers who would rather prevent ‘problem’ bears from being created in the first place.”

Many citizens are confused as to why the problem bears are destroyed. The reality is that once a bear gets a taste for human food they will do almost anything to get more. For example, black bears will even force their way through a powerful electric fence to access a known food source. Since public safety is the first priority of conservation officers, they are required to shoot a bear that has become habituated to non-natural food sources. According to the Human Wildlife Conflicts Response Policy located on the Ministry of Environment website, “It is expected that all but in the rarest occasions conservation officers… will have to resort to destroying the predator due to the policy regarding public safety.”

People also ask why the bears are not relocated. The Ministry of Environment website explains, “Translocation is rarely successful as often [relocated] bears return to their original home territory or they become ‘problem’ bears in other communities. In addition, translocated bears usually fail to adapt to their new habitat. They often starve to death or are killed by bears that already occupy the territory.”

Human-caused bear problems are not just a public safety issue—it’s also a financial one. According to the Conservation Officers Services website, the government agency spends more than $1 million annually in response to bear complaints and relocating or destroying bears.

As a result, the provincial government has initiated tougher laws to compel people to be more careful with possible bear attractants located on their property. It is now considered an offence for people in BC to feed dangerous wildlife or disobey orders to remove substances that can attract dangerous animals to their property. Those who refuse to comply face a heavy penalty of up to $50,000 and/or six months in jail.

Clearly, the only long term solution is to prevent the problem bears from being created in the first place and that’s where the Cumberland Bear Initiative comes in.

The main goal of the Cumberland Bear Initiative is to provide education to help reduce human-bear conflicts that result in the killing of bears. Household garbage, they say, is the number one attractant to bears, followed by other attractants such as pet food, uncleaned barbecues, bird feeders, compost bins, as well as orchard and garden produce.

Residents can drastically reduce bear problems by managing these attractants so they are not a temptation to the bears that migrate through the village. To protect the safety of our own as well as our bear population, residents must do what they can to ensure that the bears use our urban areas only as a corridor… not a smorgasbord.

Simply put, it’s not a situation of them or us. If we learn to change our habits, we can share space with our bear population.

For more info search Cumberland Bear Initiative on Facebook, or the BC Conservation Officers Services at www.env.gov.bc.ca/cos
To learn how other communities are becoming ‘Bear Smart’ visit www.bearsmartbc.com
To track bear sightings in the village: www.cumberlandbeartracker.com

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Be Bear Smart!

• Dispose of garbage properly.
• Store all solid waste behind closed doors in your garage, basement or secure area, or use bear proof containers.
• Only put garbage out on the morning of collection.
• Feed your pets indoors and store pet food indoors.
• Pick ripe and excess fruit and remove windfall on a regular basis. Harvest fruits and vegetables as they ripen.
• Don’t put food waste in backyard compost bins. Take part in the weekly curbside compost organics collection.
• Use bird feeders only in winter.
• Burn your barbecues clean immediately after use.