Burnaby residents’ irresponsible food waste habits may end up costing a mother bear and two cubs their lives, according to the B.C. Conservation Officer Service.
“This family unit is likely on their way to being removed indefinitely from the population because people have habituated them so much,” Sgt. Todd Hunter told the NOW. “We’ve seen a number of reports where a sow and cubs is going from yard to yard, getting at unsecured food waste, scattered fruit that’s ripe and fallen.”
Caroline Stokes encountered the mother bear and cubs as she and her nine-year-old son were driving near the end of Piper Drive ready to take a walk around Burnaby Lake.
“Just as I was about to turn around the roundabout thing right at the bottom of Piper, the bears ran out,” she said. “The mother bear stopped and then charged at the car. Fortunately it didn’t do much else.”
After the bears wandered away, Stokes and her son got out and warned people to get out of the area.
“There was a lot of people, a lot of people playing Pokemon GO,” she said. “I don’t know how they missed it.”
After trying to warn a few non-English speaker of the danger, Stokes believes there should multi-language bear warning signs in the park.
“They were walking right towards the bears,” she said.
Stokes reported the encounter to the B.C. Conservation Officer Service immediately, but she doesn’t want the bears removed or put down.
“I don’t want that to happen. I think we need to respect that they are here,” she said.
She said there should be more awareness about bears and that people should avoid parks during peak bear season.
“I think there needs to be a no-human zone or something,” she said.
Reports of bear-human encounters are up this year, according to Hunter, and the service is working with the City of Burnaby on solutions.
“We’re doing as much as we can here,” he said, “but we do need bylaws and we do need people in Burnaby to not leave their garbage cans outside of their residence with food waste in them. ...They can’t always just rely on us to make it safe for their communities. There’s not a lot of things we can do for these bears. People think that we can just move these things and that the problem’s gone. That’s not the case.”
Traps have been set for the mother bears and cubs, meanwhile, but, as of Friday afternoon, the family unit was still at large, according to Hunter.
“Just because we have traps set out doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to go in them, especially when there’s a ton of food sources around,” he said.
Hunter explained bears aren’t normally destroyed because of one encounter.
“We’d like to see a pattern of abnormal and threatening behaviour, especially before putting down an entire family unit,” he said.
