By Steve Hubrecht
The nights are crisp and frost is in the garden, but it’s not quite time for bears to head to their dens just yet. It has become common to see bears roaming the streets of Columbia Valley communities throughout the fall, and this year is no different.
But if the bears weren’t scoring meals in town, they wouldn’t be here in the first place, reminded Columbia Valley Wildsafe coordinator Anna Grant.
The bruins will probably be here for another few weeks before they begin hibernating some time in mid-November.
“You hear the term ‘problem bear’, but unfortunately we (humans) are the ones causing the problem,” Grant told the Pioneer.
From mid to late August through the middle of November — coinciding with the time that bears tend to appear in valley communities — bears are in a state called hyperphagia, in which they need to eat almost continuously in an effort to build up enough fat reserves to last through their coming hibernation.
“It is a challenging time for them,” said Grant.
That’s an understatement indeed: the bears need to consume at least 20,000 calories a day. If that sounds like a lot, well, it is. In fact, it’s equivalent to eating 67 cheeseburgers a day for three months straight. A pregnant mother bear with cubs on the way may need to eat even more.
When the Pioneer spoke with Grant last week, she had, in her role as WildSafe coordinator, been receiving reports of bears in town in Invermere, Windermere and Fairmont Hot Springs.
“It’s tough to find 20,000 calories (a week) of berries and other natural food sources in the forest, especially this time of year. But ideally, that’s where they should find it,” she said.
The bears come into urban areas looking for food, and when they find it, they stick around.
Garbage, outlined Grant, is the number one bear attractant in towns. Number two is fruit trees, and the third (and perhaps less obvious to some) common problem is setting up bird feeders too early (or worse still, keeping bird feeders up year round).
Grant noted that, as per bylaws, garbage should not be put out for collection until 8 a.m. at the earliest. Bears have an incredibly keen sense of smell and are able to detect scents two kilometres away. That’s why garbage needs to be kept indoors. You can do one better by thoroughly scraping all food remnants off plates, bowls, and other dishes, then putting them in a ziploc bag in the freezer until garbage collection day.
Wildlife biologists who study bears have been amazed at the olfactory receptors of bears; by far the best of any animal on the continent. As grizzly bear biologist Jennifer Fortin-Noreus has explained, “the surface area inside the nose of a human is about the size of a postage stamp. In a dog’s nose it’s about the size of a sheet of printer paper, and the surface area of a bear’s nose is about the size of four sheets of printer paper.”
Not only are bears quite adept at sniffing out calorie-laden goodies in garbage from a long way away, but also, once they do get a ‘food reward’ at a certain spot, they will repeatedly come back to check that location again and again, as they have very good memories. Unfortunately the situation is worse when it’s a sow bear with cubs. Not only will the mother come back time and again, but she is also teaching the cubs to come back year after year too.
Keeping fruit trees clean of ripe fruit is the best way to mitigate them as bear attractants, and bird feeders are best put out from December to March, when the bears are in their dens.
Grant pointed out that there are 800 calories per kilogram in birdseed, and that if you put out bird feeders before December or keep them out after March “you are feeding more than the birds.”
She explained that although factors such as the wild berry crop and forest fires do play a role in determining where bears go and when they go, they pale in comparison to the biggest factor: human-created attractants.
“It is all about habitualization. They (the bears) would not be here if they were not getting food,” said Grant, adding if bears do become habitualized, they become emboldened, and try getting into sheds and garbages. And at that point, it could become a public safety issue.
