Spring bear sightings
Teen driver strikes bear on Highway 103
Jacob Ackles was driving on Highway 103 Monday night when his car struck a huge black bear.
It was around 10 p.m. and Ackles, 17, was driving from Timberlea to Tantallon to see friends.
“I was getting on the highway and I had just got up to around 110 km/h,” Ackles said Wednesday.
“I glanced down to set my cruise control, made sure it was set and everything, and I looked up and there was a black bear like two inches away from my front bumper. And it just smashed right (off the passenger side).”
The crash was “instant” on a pitch-black night, he said.
“There was no moon, and the bear was black, so the only determining factor that I even had that it was a bear was its snout. Because I could see its snout when I immediately looked up. But that’s all I got. It was just gone.”
‘QUITE LUCKY’
He estimated the bear weighed more than 200 kilograms.
“I wasn’t hurt. I actually got quite lucky,” Ackles said.
“The bear – the way I hit it, it just deflected off the passenger side. But had I hit it more towards the driver’s side, it probably would have went up and through the windshield.”
The Hyundai Elantra he was driving was extensively damaged in the collision.
“It’s pretty bad,” Ackles said. “The insurance company is taking care of it.”
He heard rustling in the trees after the crash but didn’t spot the bear again.
“I was kind of in a panic,” Ackles said, noting he sat in his car for a few minutes on the side of the highway before getting out to check the damage.
‘PRETTY SURE IT’S ALIVE’
“I could definitely hear it in the woods,” he said of the bear. “I’m pretty sure it’s alive … I could hear something moving and it was big because it was rustling through leaves.”
Before Monday, the Grade 12 student at Bay View High School had never seen a bear in the wild.
“It’s the luckiest outcome of an unlucky situation,” Ackles said.
Bears are waking up hungry all around the edges of Halifax Regional Municipality, with the Department of Natural Resources and Renewables warning folks that a mama bear and her cubs have been spotted recently near Dartmouth’s Appian Way.
“The big thing is attractants,” said Butch Galvez, a wildlife technician with the department.
“Bird seed in this case seems to be a big attractant, but compost (also attracts them). Normally, bears don’t want to travel into residential areas like that. So, it’s all about food.”
‘A HUGE ATTRACTANT’
Galvez talked to a few people in the area.
“They had bird feeders, bags of bird seed in the backyard – that's a huge attractant,” he said.
“From a couple handfuls of birdseed, they can get more calories than half a day grazing on grass and dandelions.”
One Montebello resident said his wife and young daughter saw the mama bear and two cubs in the backyard of their St. Clair Avenue home last week.
“We get them every year,” said the man, who asked not to be identified.
The bears come from a nearby green belt, he said.
Last Monday’s sighting came after the neighbour’s green bin was knocked over.
‘EVERYONE PANICS’
“Mom and the two cubs were in the yard around 11:30 that morning,” he said.
“Everyone panics, but at the first sound of anything, she takes off. We are cognizant of the fact that they’re there. But I’m also cognizant of the fact that I live on a green belt and we keep driving them out with development. So, they’ve got to go somewhere, right?”
He’s made a pact with his neighbours not to call DNR about the bear sightings.
“I can’t bring myself to do it,” he said. “We keep taking their homes and she doesn’t bother us, other than cleaning up bear scat a dozen times a summer.”
His two young daughters have named the mama bear Winnie, after Winnie-the-pooh.
“We look at it as a gift really because I’m right smack dab in the middle of the city and we’ve got deer and foxes and bears and vultures – we've got it all out there and feel quite fortunate, truth be told.”
His daughters aren’t as keen on the cubs as some of the mama’s previous offspring wrecked their inflatable pool a few summers back.
“The cubs played in the pool and they popped the pool because their little claws were like needles,” he said. “So, my daughters don’t have any time for them.”
In the wild, black bears would be eating new growth now, said Galvez, the wildlife technician.
“There’s not a lot, but they’re pretty resourceful,” he said.
“So, they’d be eating new leaves before they get a lot of cellulose, like the poplar leaves, dandelions, clover, grasses. There are quite a few different plants in their diet, and also insects. And then even carrion, too. So, they can adapt. But their nose is really powerful and that’s what leads them into communities.”
‘POWERFUL NOSE’
A full composter can draw bears from a kilometre or more away, Galvez said.
“Their nose is at least 10 times better than a dog,” he said.
“They are detecting smells and air currents probably better than any other land animal on the continent.”
He’s recommending people put away their bird feeders and green bins to stop attracting bears.
“You have that powerful nose, an animal that has to eat a fair amount of food and also the intelligence of black bears – they’re extremely intelligent. So, that creates situations just because they’ll find food if we make it available.”
Most black bears are scared of people, Galvez said.
“The one issue is if they’re getting food around humans, they can become a little bit food conditioned or habituated or familiarized to the sounds of the human environment. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re an aggressive bear, but it does mean you have a bear now that’s dependent on human food, that’s spending more time around homes and in communities. There’s always that slight risk that somebody’s dog off-leash is going to chase the bear, or a bear gets cornered. They have a lot of tolerance around people but really, they should be wild.”
A rough estimate pegs Nova Scotia’s bear population at between 8,000 and 10,000, he said.
‘PRETTY SAVVY’
Galvez is monitoring the bear situation around Appian Way.
“This one is pretty savvy. She knows her way around. Having said that, we just want her to spend as little time as possible in areas like Appian Way, and more time in the woods.”
She was spotted with two or three cubs, he said.
“They would have been born in January, so they’re not much bigger than a raccoon. They will be with mom until this time next year.”
He sees about 30 active bears most years in areas including Cherry Brook, Salmon River, Hubbards, Tantallon, Timberlea, Hammonds Plains, Fall River, Lake Loon and Prospect.
“The first few weeks of June are usually the busiest time,” Galvez said. “One of the reasons why it’s busy now is because the families are breaking up.”
The 18-month-old cubs weighing about 30 kilograms “are yearlings now and they’re leaving their mothers,” he said.
“You have bears with not as much experience on the landscape and they’re just going to follow their nose.”
BACK AWAY SLOWLY
If a bear feels threatened, “they’ll often display,” Galvez said.
“If a bear feels threatened, they’ll usually make noise, they’ll huff, or they may clack their teeth, or even swat the ground.”
If you run into one, back away slowly, he said.
“You can talk to the bear in a calm voice. You don’t want to startle a bear or corner a bear.”
Once you get to a safe place, he advised to make some noise.
“Through the kitchen window you can beat pots and pans and try to get the bear to go away.”
‘A LOT OF RESTRAINT’
Black bears “tend to have a lot of restraint,” Galvez said.
“They’re not like grizzly bears. But at the same time, in a backyard they may feel cornered.”
Even a dirty barbecue grill or un-rinsed recyclables will attract bears, he said.
“Clean that up and hopefully the bear won’t come back.”
If a bear won’t leave a neighbourhood, they can be trapped and moved.
“That’s a last resort,” Galvez said. “They’re very tied to their home ranges.”
COME BACK HUNGRIER
Even if you take a bear 70 or 80 kilometres from their stomping grounds, they’ll usually come right back, he said.
“If I took that female (bear on Appian Way) out to Musquodoboit tomorrow, not only would she come back within a couple of weeks but she’s probably going to be leaner and hungrier because she’ll be just driven to get back to her home range, and it could make the situation actually worse.”
Problem bears are killed on occasion.
“It’s actually rare, but if bears are getting too much human food, if they become brazen, there are bears that may try to get into homes or they start breaking into cars – at that point it’s a public safety issue,” Galvez said.