Courting Danger: Ignoring Our Bear Situation

By Michelle Cyr-Whiting

                                                                                         Opinion250 file photo

Prince George, B.C. - The Wildlife Biologist with Northern Bear Awareness is wondering if it's going to take a fatality to get the City of Prince George to become a 'Bear Smart' community.

Registered Professional Biologist Lana Ciarniello says, she and the NBA have been working for years on collecting the data necessary to push the City take some concrete steps towards proactively managing the bear habitat we live within.

"There's ways to get people to do something with bears: one is someone dies and you certainly don't want that way -- you've seen it in Banff and a number of places -- where nothing's done until someone dies," she says. "And, the other, is to get a bunch of data until you force them to do it."

So that's what she's been doing. In October of 2008, Ciarniello completed a Bear Hazard Assessment for Prince George -- using a $10-thousand dollar grant and donating $10-thousand dollars worth of her time. (She says similar reports by RPBs cost approximately $20-thousand in B.C.) In October of 2009, the biologist published a Human-Bear Conflict Prevention Management Plan -- using another $10-thousand dollar grant and, again, donating half her time. (The full reports can be found at www.northernbearawareness.com) And, presently, she's conducting the Urban Bear Research project, which involves collaring bears to find out their 'critical areas' in the city.

The NBA member says, "(Collecting the data) is one of the only ways, I think, that we can start to reduce the number of bears destroyed." She says Prince George destroys the most bears annually in B.C.. The Ministry of Environment has designed a Bear Smart program that involves six criteria a community must reach to achieve bear smart status:

1. prepare a bear hazard assessment
2. prepare a bear/human conflict management plan that is designed to address bear hazards
3. revise planning and decision-making documents to be consistent with bear/human conflict management plan
4. implement a continuing education plan directed at all sectors of the community
5. develop and maintain a bear-proof municipal solid waste management system
6. implement 'Bear Smart' bylaws prohibiting the provision of food to bears as a result of intent, neglect or irresponsible management of attractants

So far, Kamloops is the only city with official designation, but Whistler has just completed all six.

Ciarniello says Northern Bear Awareness has done all it can to move Prince George towards that goal and, "Really, the rest falls on the City to take up."

"The City has done stuff, don't get me wrong, they've put money in, they've put bear-proof garbage cans in parks...and a number of bears were being caught and killed in Cottonwood Park and all those areas." But she says the NBA appeared before City Council three times before finally getting a resolution to move towards Bear Smart status in June of 2009.

"We (NBA) can't take it any farther," says a frustrated Ciarniello. "We can't update city planning documents, we can't make wildlife corridors and provisions for wildlife to be mandatory within new development plans, we can't finish the fencing of the Foothills landfill -- that's beyond what Northern Bear Awareness can do, we're just a group of volunteers who are concerned."

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