© Stephen OachsLast week, the Toronto Police Unit specially trained to respond to emergencies shot and killed a black bear a few miles from my home. Between this urban residential area and habitat to the north, where bears normally occur, is a vast buffer zone of urban sprawl and farmland. In the Malvern area of Scarborough, where the bear died, I doubt that there has been a bear sighting in living memory. But, bears do move around. A few years ago, one showed up across the street from my own home in Markham, part of the greater Toronto area. Happily, he was tranquilized and safely moved.[teaserbreak]
Folks in central and northern Ontario who support the controversial spring bear hunt (see here and here) often claim that we “southerners” in essentially bear-free regions would panic if a bear appeared. In fact, there was no panic—in Scarborough or here—but there was most assuredly sympathy for the bears who have been killed in southern, urban Ontario.
When police shot a bear in urban Newmarket two years ago, there was an outcry. Although the more highly populated southern urban centers of Ontario host an extreme diversity of culture and immigrants unfamiliar with our wildlife, people are also sensitive to environmental and conservation concerns, and are exposed to a diversity of views.
In Scarborough, the police did all they could to try to find help from Toronto’s well-run Animal Services, from the privately-run Toronto Wildlife Center, and from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry.
The Get Bear Smart Society, based in Whistler, British Columbia, has already reached out to Toronto’s City Council with an offer to help prepare for the next bear to reach the region, as will inevitably happen. The Bear With Us organization, based a couple of hours north of Toronto, certainly has the necessary expertise to help us plan for bears. The Toronto Wildlife Center could also play a role. Toronto’s council is mostly compassionate and fact-driven.
Quite a number of years ago, in a similar situation in Thunder Bay, a bullet fired at a bear struck a hard surface and ricocheted through a house window, narrowly missing a mother and child. The risk of that sort of mishap is tiny, but so is the risk posed by the presence of a bear. Even in Ontario’s north, no one has been killed in any town or city by a bear—and we don’t want that to happen.
So, let’s hope that the death of the Scarborough bear was a sufficient wake-up call for the city of Toronto to avail itself of the expertise available. Although, what would be better would be for the provincial premier to stop the false assurance of a spring bear hunt to the north, and return funding to its own program to help us co-exist with these magnificent animals among us.
Keep wildlife in the wild,
Barry