Black bear behaviour affected by wildfire
Wildlife officers have been forced to kill eight of the 17 black bears captured since the Fort McMurray forest fire.
The number is not too dissimilar to previous years, said Brendan Cox, spokesman for the province’s Fish and Wildlife Enforcement Branch, adding that wildlife officers don’t take the killing of the omnivores lightly.
“Putting a bear down is the most distasteful option for our officers,” Cox said.
At the same time last year, 11 black bears had been captured and in 2014 that number was 15. Numbers were not immediately available on euthanasia cases from those years.
Just one of the 17 bears — found 70 kilometres outside the city at an industrial site — showed aggression toward humans. The remainder showed “severe signs of habituation,” or “little or no perceived reaction to people.”
That could stem from the mass evacuation of Fort McMurray on May 3, in which black bears fleeing the flames and searching for food moved into the city.
“The absence of people is probably the biggest contributing factor for the bears getting into garbage,” Cox said.
The destruction of bear habitat in northern Alberta because of the fire is a concern for Kim Titchener, a wildlife conflict reduction consultant and founder of wildlife education company, Bear Safety & More, based in Canmore.
“Bears need berries,” Titchener said. “When these huge lots of land have been destroyed and they don’t have food sources for these bears, what will they do?
“We should take this as a warning because bears have lost so much habitat that we should be extra cautious and ensure that residents are keeping it really clean in the Fort McMurray area.”
Bears are on the move throughout Alberta, with two grizzlies spotted in Cochrane over the weekend. A black bear was shot by Canada Parks conservation officers in Jasper National Park on May 21 after it became aggressive toward people.
As the couple readied an inflatable boat on the shoreline of a lake in the Valley of Five Lakes area, the male bear started rummaging through their packs. The pair screamed, and the bear moved off. Resource conservation officers arrived just as the bear returned.
They positioned themselves between the bear and the couple, Parks Canada wildlife biologist Mark Bradley said. When the bear refused to stop or retreat, they had no other choice but to kill it.
“There had been reports that people had been feeding a bear very close to this spot on the highway,” Bradley said. “When this happens, it never ends well for the bear.”