The last few weeks, I’ve been getting regular visits from a medium sized male black bear. He’s been in my yard on at least 3 occasions (pictured at right and below), mostly eating my dandelions. He took a nap one afternoon in my next-door neighbour’s back yard (pictured above), while they watched from inside their house. He’s regularly been reported in my hamlet by various residents, and been photographed on numerous occasions feeding on grasses near our tennis court and playground. He’s generally been keeping out of trouble, but gotten at least a couple of people’s hummingbird feeders, had a few face-to-face meetings with off-leash dogs, and may have gotten into unsecured garbage at a nearby trailhead.

Habituation of bears is a double-edged sword. All bears have to be at least somewhat habituated to people in this area in order to survive. But bears – and other large carnivores – that get too complacent around people can end up too close, too often, and that can lead to necessary management actions. As I tell people while doing my Wildlife Ambassador work, “Wildlife interactions always end badly for the wildlife”.

As an example, I’m sure most readers followed the story of Bear 148 in 2017. This female grizzly started life in Banff as the daughter of Bear 64, growing up near the Banff townsite. She got very used to people, and when she became a young teenager free from mom, started making a living in the dense Bow Valley corridor. While she ranged from Castle Mountain to Kootenay Park to Lake Minnewanka and Canmore, home remained centered on Banff.

In the summer of 2017, 148 spent a bunch of time feeding in the Canmore area, mostly around Quarry Lake and the Nordic Centre, having multiple interactions with people. Though she touched no one, there were several bluff charge incidents; she also got very close on a few occasions, especially to some off-leash dogs. She was translocated once over to to Castle Mountain, but was back in Canmore within 72 hrs. The area around Quarry Lake was closed, because she and at least 5 other bears were in the area feeding. Some people ignored the closures, the close calls continued, and the decision was finally made to move her to the Kakwa Wildland Park in northern Alberta. There, she wandered into BC, and was legally hunted – just before legal grizzly hunting was ended in the province.

As a result of the 148 experiences, a roundtable was empaneled to look at Human Wildlife Coexistence in the Bow Valley. Chaired by our local MLA Cam Westhead, and the two mayors of Banff and Canmore, the panel’s job was to look at the 148 story and see what lessons could be learned. The first thing they did was charge a team of technical experts from the National Park, Alberta Parks, and others to look at the facts, data and science, and make recommendations. The technical panel released their 88-page report this month. They have made 28 recommendations, and if you live, recreate, know of the Bow Valley – or even like wildlife – it’s a must read. Click here or on the picture to read about the process, find out who was involved, and download the report.

I think having the bear around this week, or the elk on my yard last year, or the deer I regularly get, or the frequent visits from the coyotes or snowshoe hares, or Grizzly Bear 136 in my yard a few years back (pictured at right), makes living where I live very cool. But the report suggests otherwise. It makes the argument that the presence of carnivores in urban settings should not be tolerated. Bear Safety out of Whistler posted this recently, saying essentially the same thing:

Bear advocates will tell you that by giving a bear a positive experience with a human (a.k.a. a human quietly watching a bear at a close proximity posing absolutely no threat to the bear) only leads to the habituation of the bear. Every encounter a bear has with humans matters because these instances have a way of piling up on each other. Once habituated, accustomed to people's presence, bears grow more and more emboldened with every encounter. It isn't long before they decide it's OK to enter public spaces; and therefore, said bear becomes a dead bear.

​Without detailing the investigation, the report illustrates exactly how much went wrong in 148’s story. It points out that there are many aspects of human behaviour that need to be modified if we are to have any long-term hope of having these animals around, and how many of the things we all do today do not lead to coexistence. Some things will be happening immediately; for instance, this summer, two new seasonal Park Rangers will be patrolling for infractions of human use in the wildlife corridor and off-leash dogs. But there is so much more to do.

There are hard choices to be made in Kananaskis and the Bow Valley about how to make sure that we can ensure wildlife can thrive, while also allowing people to have their fun. At least some of those will involve people having to decide to change their behaviour, and have their fun somewhere else. We may have to learn to choose to go elsewhere when there are bear/cougar/elk warnings in an area, or learn that certain spaces will be closed at certain times of the year. We will need to learn that we are not entitled to walk our dogs anywhere we want, on-leash or off-, nor ride our bikes wherever we want just because we feel like it. We need to realize that, if we’re not carrying bear spray and we encounter an animal, it’s our problem, not the animal’s.

And we might have to learn that having a bear in our yard is not actually very good for the bear, even if all it’s doing is eating dandelions.

Once again, here’s a link to the panel and the report. I recommend reading it.​