Whistler Question, April 17, 2008

After reading last week’s Whistler Question article regarding garbage/bear issues, collection of an underweight cub to Critter Care, and proposing birth control drugs to a resident female bear, I need to respond with concerns for black bear management in Whistler. I have been studying black bears within the RMOW for now 15 years.

First, local government does not seem to acknowledge the seriousness of unchecked garbage issues in Whistler. Each year there seems to be some reason for not exploring bear-proof containment in residential areas.

Yes, recycling and waste reduction is important, but I think that a bear population feeding for more than 40 years on edible human garbage at various dump and now residential/commercial sites is a significant issue. And as a result of garbage feeding, dangerous behaviours are evolving (breaking into houses/vehicles and one person injured) not to mention multi-generations of bears exposed to this degrading behaviour.

Bears are extremely visible landscape indicators that need proper management, which means containing garbage to the best of our ability and providing outreach to people.

The latter is progressive each year, but I’m sorry to say, RMOW, that effective bear-proof garbage containment is non-existent and the bears have proved it.

Second, the destruction of the young mother bear Juniper and cub in 2007 has sparked some kind of misled emotional urge to save bears in poor condition that would otherwise perish naturally. Yes, death is not nice to see, especially with a cute little cub, but it is a part of nature - a healthy nature. Taking an underweight cub to a facility where it is cared for by people and fed supplemental food, only to be released into a population where human-habituated and human food-conditioned behaviours are currently running amuck, is not healthy.

Bear numbers in Whistler are healthy. I would like to see the science that states they are not. A growing bear population such as Whistler’s needs natural mortality, not interference. Mean annual survival rate for cubs in 2006-’07 was 86 per cent and has never dropped below 70 per cent since 1996. The highest cub production recorded in the last 14 years was 50 cubs in 2006-’07. Even at 70 per cent annual survival rate, that is a significant number of subsequent juvenile bears released into the population.

 

Comparatively, across North America, annual cub survival rates have frequently ranged from 30 to 70 per cent. And thus, our current problem in Whistler - generation after generation of juvenile bears lured to the unchecked availability of garbage.

And third, we are now bypassing the garbage issue again and proposing to change bear biology by giving the mother bear Jeanie (resident to Whistler Mountain) birth control drugs just because we haven’t had the know-how to do something about the very core of this conflict - garbage.

Short-term or long-term birth control restrictions are rash approaches to wildlife management when other options are better applied.

Manipulating female bear biology is a “cop-out” which says to me that we are trying to keep this bear alive at any cost (to her, of course, not to people) which has nothing to do with understanding and proactively dealing with seasonal bear behaviour.

We need to deal with Jeanie as best we can, which included what we did last fall - bear proofing her route and successfully pushing her from the Village. And Conservation Officers need to appreciate the knowledge we have on this bear (as • they have done in the past) and allow adaptive management to safely guide her through the seasons.

It takes work to coexist with our bears and I believe Jeanie and other bears deserve that.

Michael Allen, Black Bear Researcher, Paradise Valley