Conservations officers in the Omineca region including Prince George have been run off their feet, responding to over 400 calls for bear sightings during the first week of August.
There have been several reports of bear sightings all over the northern capital.
Eamon MacArthur with the Conservation Officer Service told Vista Radio their phone has been ringing off the hook.
“We are at an over 300% call volume just to this point when compared to the entirety of last month, last year. We are at over 400 calls since the beginning of August.”
“The calls into the Omineca zone last year in August was 145 and the calls that we have had from August 1st to August 6th this is around 396 calls.”
He adds the city is not doing enough to limit bear attractants.
MacArthur added if residents have any easily-accessed fruit or apples they are not using, to contact the Bear Awareness Society or the Northern Lights Estate Winery so that it can be collected and re-purposed.
“We have a lot of fruit trees heading into town and whether there is a low berry crop or something outside of town – the bears are moving into town and we have ordered people to remove the fruit and get it out of your yards.”
“The city needs to do better because the city isn’t doing enough. We are working with bylaws regarding people leaving their cans out – these are bylaw infractions and if you call us, we will redirect you to bylaws.”
Lisa (who requested not to use her last name), who is on the board of the Northern Bear Awareness Society in Prince George stated the numerous posts on social media platforms like Facebook might be skewing the issue a little bit.
“It’s hard to know the accuracy of the bear sightings versus bear quantity, the quantity of the bears. Social media makes it really easy to alert our community that a bear is in the area, however, others can comment they saw a bear as well but it could have been last week or a different bear.”
“The same bear can create multiple sightings – so even with those increased bear reports to the CO officers and that doesn’t always translate to a more quantity of bears.”
She also noted bears are likely finding it harder to find food in rural areas due to some recent land development that was built right in their territory.
“A lot of the green spaces have been cleared for more housing developments and of course, that is a loss of habitat and displacement. When the bears come back they say hey, this was forest before and now it’s housing, let’s see what I can find to eat around here.”
“A bear walking through the city without getting into the attractants is not a problem bear. It is merely walking through its habitat and we happen to put a house there.”
A large-scale, trap, collar, and release program could be one way to better gauge a bear’s tracking activity in places like Prince George according to the Bear Awareness Society.
However, there is one problem, they don’t have the funding currently to carry it out.
Lisa believes initiatives like this have had success in the past.
“In the past, we have done where we have collared a number of bears to see what their tracking history and behavior is like. It gives them an idea as to how frequently they are coming into the city instead staying in the more bush habitat.”
Lisa also wants the city to step up its efforts after it stopped funding its Bear Smart program in 2020.
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