Home ›

LETTER: Bear attractants shouldn't be near where kids play

by Contributor on 14 Jun 2012
in
LETTER: Bear attractants shouldn't be near where kids play

Dear editor,

These pictures (attached) were taken this evening at RSS as children were
leaving from soccer. This parking area is the main pathway through a large
block of upper Rossland for children going to and from elementary schools
and it is also a very "blocked" area where a bear could quite easily feel
trapped. Having a food source in this area is dangerous for people and
detrimental to the bears.

RSS personnel should manage their waste more appropriately. I believe one of
the reason that the regular citizens of Rossland were forced to give up the
convenience of a dumpster for waste sorting and disposal was that it was
considered to be a potential bear attractant. Perhaps SD20 could hold RSS to
the same standard?

Michelle Tanguay

Rossland

Photo by Michelle Tanguay
Photo by Michelle Tanguay
Photo by Michelle Tanguay

Comments

bear on RSS dumpster

by Rossland Bear Aware on 18 Jun 2012 at about 13:40.

Kathy Moore is exactly right about residents being complacent with bears freely wandering through town accessing people food that includes 'yummy gross trash’, pet food (feed your dog outside?), bird food (black oil sunflower seeds have high caloric value) and non-native fruit from backyard trees, to name just a few attractants. Andrew Bennett is also right that there is no record of human injury by bears in Rossland. However, wildlife biologists and Conservation Officers have gathered information that repeatedly prove that once a bear gets a taste for people food and becomes habituated to having people in its daily encounter, they become more aggressive. That ‘poor little cinnamon cub’ has probably been on its own for a year or more and has already learned how easy it is to get food in town.  Since bears in the wild can live over 20 years, this bear will continue to flex its muscle in the pecking order and will likely use garbage as ‘the gateway drug’ to more hard core behaviour like ripping your metal shed apart or popping the window on your new truck or taking out the front door of your house to get at the pancakes with syrup that you just finished eating. Think this is unlikely?  Statistics prove otherwise.  Just ask around and see how many people you talk to before you find someone that has experienced this personally.  My guess is you will talk to less than 10 people.

What can YOU do to prevent this?  First and foremost, MAKE ALL ATTRACTANTS INACCESSIBLE TO BEARS.  Install electric fence around chickens, fruit trees and gardens. Secondly, make the bears feel unwelcome in our town.  There will always be bears in Rossland so it is up to the people to make sure they don’t like it here.  When you see a bear, move to a safe place and make loud noise, talk in a stern voice telling it to move on, throw small objects at the bear like rocks, golf balls etc to let the bear experience a negative reaction from people.  The phrase ‘A Fed Bear is a Dead Bear’ has its roots in fact and experience.  This year is showing signs of bear activity similar to 2010 when 13 bears were shot in Rossland alone.  Let’s all work together to make sure this isn’t the same for 2012.    

Please do your part to keep the bears wild.

Call the RAPP line to report garbage issues and bear sightings 1-877-952-7277.

  

Thanks, Bear Aware!

by Andrew Bennett on 18 Jun 2012 at about 14:09.

Absolutely, we shouldn't leave anything yummy where bears can get it. And now, thanks to the forward thinking of the last council, it's the law.

I have a couple questions, however.

1) Fruit trees: Are these part of the "gateway drugs"? I can see how pushing over a trash can or ripping into a sack of pet food could lead to tearing off truck canopies and smashing in doors, but does sitting in an apple tree train the bear anything beyond the fact that there's fruit in town? I doubt there's any evidence that fruit bears are problem bears in the absence of trashy people.

I do agree, however, that we should all pick our fruit or give REAL Food (www.rosslandfood.com) and the awesome volunteer services of Harvest Rescue's David Klein et al. to come pick it. Some bears like to get the fruit before it's fully ripe, so a couple weeks of temporary electric fence can do the trick too. I know that e-fence works because I've had one awful disaster. It was in a high bear traffic zone in Happy Valley where I'd seen bears daily. Then, one night the fence was accidentally turned off and bears are uncannily good at knowing when an e-fence is off...unlike my dog who steers clear of anything that remotely looks like one.

2) Throwing rocks etc.: This doesn't sit well with me. I believe in according all creatures respect. Speaking sternly, asserting authority through body posture and deep commands—these all seem like great ideas to give the bear the message: "I'm in charge here, and you're in my territory. Scram!" But throwing rocks seems a tad violent, and with the wrong bear might even incite an undesired reaction. (For example, a momma with cubs who feels your act of violence has threatened her children.)

Just some thoughts...

Agreed. We have a pretty good

by Adrian Barnes on 15 Jun 2012 at about 12:48.

Agreed. We have a pretty good relationship with our ursine neighbours, but that's because of a tradition of (bear) awareness and caution. Onward!

I think you're

by Adrian Barnes on 15 Jun 2012 at about 08:56.

I think you're anthropomorphizing a little here, Andrew! I like to watch bears myself and when I was a kid my Brit parents would let me hand feed them from our car window, but calling them 'friendly' is really saying 'habituated'. It's true that there have been no fatal bear attacks in Rossland and that bears are not out to get us, but they are animals, and if they feel cornered, they do attack. So if I imagine a group of kids riding their bikes into that corner of the RSS parking lot and startling a hungry bear...something bad could happen.

But, then again, what do I know? One of my favourite films of all times is Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man...and I tend to see things as Herzog does there!

Bears are people too!

by Andrew Bennett on 15 Jun 2012 at about 11:20.

Grizzly Man was definitely a good movie, but what a nutbar...

I'm a much bigger fan of the Bear Man of Kamchatka—Charlie Russell, who visited Rossland last year and spoke wonderfully about bear-human relationships at the Miners' Hall.

Sure, I'll accept the sin of anthropomorphism... but I think it's a sin worth sinning, as Jane Goodall pointed out to the stuck-in-the-muds of the old boys club scientists back in the day when she named chimps and tried to understand them in emotional and psychological terms instead of hairy automotons with social tendencies.

Fact remains: nothing worse than property damange has happened in more than 100 years of bears and humans living together in Rossland. Granted, a lot of those years the bears were outside of town because of the old dump, so the legend goes.

I've startled a bunch of bears in other places, and they've never been too happy about it. I've startled a bunch of bears in Rossland, and they harumf and head off elsewhere. That's as friendly as I expect a bear to be.

My main point is people should compost. All this compost in trash bags feels as dirty to me as folks dumping chamber pots in the streets in the middle ages. Let's advance.

Be BearAware!

by kathy moore on 15 Jun 2012 at about 08:28.

Alot of people have been seeing the little cinnamon bear around town. I'm told by our Bearaware coordinator Sharon Weider that this is a sub-adult bear, not an orphaned cub. I am saddened to know that through our own acceptance of this bear in our amidst we are helping to kill the little guy. It never ends well for the garbage bears. Sooner or later, they run afoul of the humans and end up shot.

I am concerned that too many people are becoming complacent about bears in town and don't do enough to either scare them off or deal with their own "yummy-gross trash" (great description, Andrew). I love to see wildlife  too, its one of  reasons I live here but  by being complacent we are all contributing to that animal's death.

Despite the efforts of BearAware there are still residents who either inadvertantly, or worse, purposefully leave out food for them. The irony is they can survive very well without our help but by providing food we are pretty much insuring they'll end up dead and often those who say they really like the bears are the ones most responsible for their demise.

Yes, the garbage needs to be better disposed

by Andrew Bennett on 14 Jun 2012 at about 21:42.

For sure there shouldn't be any compostables or yummy gross trash. Composting is easy enough to do, we should all do it or collaborate with a neighbour who does—SD20, the city, you and me.

After compostables, refundables, and recyclable are sorted to their proper places, how much trash is even left?

If trash were "clean", maybe these bins could still function? Or perhaps bears are so accustomed to trying out the bins that they'd still come by?

The bears also deserve a fair word. Of the bears I've known, I really like Rossland's. They're a friendly bunch. My dog will bark in their face when they're munching on some bush fruit ... they might slow their munching and look at him.

In fact, I have yet to hear an account of a bear attack in Rossland. Someone fill me in.

I don't have kids, so maybe I won't understand until I do, but I feel things are pretty safe. Kids should definitely be advised to travel in packs and keep their eyes open, but so far so good for the bear-kid relationship in Rossland.

Garbage bears are problem bears, however, with really terrible digestion from the plastic in their gut. It could make anyone grumpy or, in their addiction for human food, come to the kind of foolish decisions that get them shot.

It would be much, much better if we didn't have yummy gross trash available in town in places intended for humans. The dumpsters behind Ferraros are another favourite bear hang out, although I know everyone there works hard to keep it clean.

The bears, in any case, scamper off and watch from a tree as I pass.