Rise in home invasions by bears demonstrates RMOW garbage regime’s inadequacies: biologist
By David Burke, Whistler Question, August 24, 2006

The escalation of bear problems in Whistler this summer points to the need for municipal officials to scrap the community’s waste collection system in favour of one that can reduce bear problems to a manageable level, a leading B.C.-based bear expert said last week.

Local bear expert Sylvia Dolson said she supports the conclusions of Wayne McCrory, who completed a bear hazard assessment for the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) two years ago, but recognizes the need to build support for a new system, starting with a pilot project in one neighbourhood.

The executive director of the Get Bear Smart Society also said the recent incident that left an Alta Vista resident with scratches to his face from a home-invading bear that took a swipe at him illustrates some of the problems with Whistler’s garbage-collection scheme.

Dolson said that she and her husband visited the home the day after the Aug. 13 incident. “I could smell the garbage from the street, so we knocked on the door and the main tenant answered the door and showed us around,” she said.

“We saw the damage that was on the door where the bear tried to exit, but there was a room off the entranceway and that’s where they were storing their garbage — behind a door.”

Dolson said the tenant told her none of the tenants in the home owned vehicles, which is why they had five large, green bags filled with garbage stored just inside. She said that technically, the tenants were in compliance with Whistler’s garbage bylaws but still wound up attracting a bear, even though it wasn’t able to access the garbage.

“I think this really highlights the need for a waste management system in Whistler that’s friendly to folks who don’t have vehicles to take their garbage to one of the compactor sites,” she said.

In May, Dolson visited Canmore, Alta., to investigate the system deemed by McCrory and others as the most effective at discouraging bears from accessing garbage. She said the recent incident here — apparently the first instance of a person having been injured by a bear locally — makes her more determined than ever to push for a similar system in Whistler.

“It strengthens our resolve to move forward with the pilot project,” Dolson said. “Before we present a proposal (for a wholesale change) to the municipality, we want to see if it works as a small pilot project to see if residents really do like it better and if it’s more effective in deterring bears from coming into conflict.”

McCrory, director of research for the Whistler Bear Working Group, called Whistler’s 12-year-old waste collection regime “a failure” and said he has little doubt that the type of bear-proof neighbourhood bins used in Canmore and Banff would significantly reduce the number of bear problems here.

He added that this summer’s marked increase in the number of home invasions is evidence that bears are becoming increasingly habituated, largely because they are still accessing garbage regularly. He said he’s convinced that until the RMOW adopts a more effective garbage collection system, the problem will only get worse.

He said efforts to reduce the number of berry-producing shrubs in built-up areas, to hire a bear response officer and to make the public more bear aware are all laudable, but said the “core problem” of garbage needs to be addressed.

“I think if Whistler doesn’t deal with it they’re going to keep losing bears, and probably have more injuries. It’s putting the public at risk, as we saw with the recent incident,” McCrory said. “They’re going to spend hundreds of thousands on public education, and that’s all important, but it’s not addressing the core problem.
“It’s sad. The 12-year system that they have, when they looked at it, they didn’t have the right information. It’s proven to be a failure and now they need to deal with it .”

During Monday’s (Aug. 21) regular meeting Councillor Eckhard Zeidler acknowledged the current system’s shortcomings and said RMOW officials need to look at other options, including Canmore’s.

“I’m not sure that I can accept bears getting it in the head because we can’t get our garbage act together,” he said.

Mayor Ken Melamed said he’s sure RMOW officials will be hearing more on the issue. “It is one that continues to be a challenge,” he said.

In his 2004 Bear Hazard Assessment, McCrory recommended that the RMOW adopt the system used in Canmore and Banff, which includes one bear-proof neighbourhood bin for every 30 households. No residence is more than a two-minute walk from one of the bins.

In the report, McCrory said that failing a full-scale adoption of that system, the RMOW should take steps to ensure that residents who don’t have access to vehicles have a convenient way to get their garbage to one of the two compactor sites.

That issue still has not been addressed, and either way, McCrory last week said that if he had it to do over, he would make his recommendations about the garbage system stronger.

“If you stop putting band-aids on the problem, you can get the problem solved. You’ll still have bear problems, but you can start managing them more effectively. The way Whistler does it now, you’re not going to get very far,” he said.

Dolson said one reason she intends to approach the RMOW with a pilot project first is money. She admits the Canmore-type bins — made by Haul-All of Lethbridge, Alta. — are expensive, at $6,000 per bin.

If Whistler were to purchase 160 of them (Canmore, with a population of 14,000, has 167), it would cost $960,000 — and that’s not including the concrete pads on which they would sit or the trucks needed to empty them.

The Whistler Bear Working Group has already received grant money for a pilot project, and Dolson said officials are trying to secure more. As well, Owen Carney of Carney’s Waste Systems has told her he has a truck that can empty the bins and has agreed to collect the garbage from eight of the bins, if the pilot project goes ahead.

“Canmore had curbside pickup and then went to this system, so it was more cost effective for them to go to this system than to continue curbside,” Dolson said. “But with our system, we’ve just go the two compactor sites and it’s (changing to a Canmore-style system) not going to save us money. It’s going to cost money. So that’s why it’s going to be a hard sell.”

Also, she said, “The municipal government owns and operates the system in Canmore, whereas here we have a waste contractor that’s providing service. You can’t expect a business to operate at a loss.”

Nonetheless, McCrory said he thinks adopting the Canmore system would save Whistler money over a period of several years.

“I ran some numbers by them (in 2004) and it’s up in the millions,” he said of the cost for Whistler to adopt a Canmore-type system community-wide. “But if you do a cost-benefit analysis over, say, a 10-year period, and compare it to the management costs — and they did something like this in Canmore — you’re going to save in the long run.”