A sure sign spring has finally hit the Lower Mainland is the growing number of bear sightings – especially in Burnaby.
With its ample forested area, Burnaby can be an inviting place for bears, but every so often a bear wanders into a residential area. This is the sight NOW reader Thomas captured on Saturday. (Thomas did not provide his last name.)
Thomas spotted a black bear wandering down the back lane behind his house, which is located in the Westridge area of North Burnaby.
“They are roaming,” he wrote in an email.
Thomas isn’t the only one in the city to have a bear encounter recently.
On the morning of May 4, there was a sighting near the Avalon Avenue entrance to Burnaby Lake, according to B.C. Conservation Foundation’s Wildlife Alert Reporting Program.
On Burnaby Mountain, meanwhile, there were six bear sightings between May 3 and 10.
On May 15, someone reported seeing a bear in an alley between Paulus Crescent and Buchanan Street, east of Sherlock Avenue.
South of Highway 1, there have been more than a dozen reports of bear sightings in the Deer Lake Park area, according to the Wildlife Alert Reporting Program.
In all cases, the sightings have been of black bears. (The black bear is the smallest of the three bears found in North America.) In some cases, they appeared to be “food conditioned” and were attracted by unsecured garbage. Garbage is the number 1 attractant of bears, according to the B.C. Conservation Foundation.
To read more about the recent bear sightings in Burnaby, check out the Wildlife Alert Reporting Program website at wildsafe
bc.com/warp. Search Burnaby in the panel on the right-hand side.
To report problem wildlife or bears in an urban setting contact the B.C. Conservation Officer Service by phone at 1-877-952-7277.
Tips to keep the bears away:
- Keep garbage inside or secured until collection day.
- Manage fruit trees: Don’t let windfalls accumulate and pick fruit as it ripens. If you don’t want the fruit, consider: accessing a fruit gleaning group in your community, washing the blossoms off in the spring so the fruit doesn’t set, or replacing the tree with a non-fruit-bearing variety.
- Don’t put bird feeders out when bears are active. A kilo of bird seed has approximately 8,000 calories and is a great reward for a hungry bear.
- Keep compost working properly with lots of brown materials and a regular schedule of turning.
- Use a properly installed and maintained electric fence to keep bears and livestock apart.
– B.C. Conservation Foundation
