2011 Bear Aware Budget Barely Enough

By 250 News

Opinion 250 file photo of collared bear provided by Northern Bear Awareness in 2010

Prince George, B.C. - Pardon the pun, but it is a bare-minimum budget in a city that destroys the most bears annually in the province...

The 2011 Northern Bear Awareness program is about to get underway thanks to an $8-thousand dollar grant from the BC Conservation Foundation, another $6-thousand dollars from Shell Canada will allow work to continue on the Northern Bear Awareness Society's urban bear collaring project.

Society President, Dr. Roger Wheate, says the BCCF grant is used to hire a student coordinator for the bear season, but everyone else volunteers their time. 

"We did put on a pub night in the fall because we just had to raise some more money for the day-to-day operations," says Wheate, "So that was very successful, it raised a couple of thousand dollars." He adds the Spruce City Wildlife does makes an in-kind donation by providing office space and facilities for the summer program.

As for the urban bear project, Wheate says the grant goes almost entirely on the cost of the GPS collars.  He says, "(Biologist Lana Ciarniello) does what she's contracted to do, but she's essentially volunteering to do it because she gets almost no money for a salary - she's essentially doing it for costs." 

The NBAS president says, "Ideally, she'd have six or 10 bears collared, but there's only enough at the moment for three."

Bear Aware programs are aimed at raising awareness and reducing bear-human conflicts in B.C. communities.  The City of Prince George is three-steps in to the six step process. (click here, for previous story)

Dr. Wheate says donations to the society are definitely always welcome, "Generally, we're always looking for a little bit more to make things work - it's very small money."

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