© Terri ShaddickWhen Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne re-introduced the spring bear hunt to the province after a couple of years of a constrained “pilot project,” she ignored the advice of bear experts on her own payroll, hoping to gain voter support from central and northern Ontario.[teaserbreak]
While there certainly were and are intelligent, well-informed northerners who oppose the spring hunt, there are also economic interests and outfitters who support it, and people who don’t read the studies their taxes pay for (who naively believe that killing more bears will make them safer). In fact, science increasingly shows that predator culls don’t achieve desired results and that, often, it is the opposite.
But, the spring bear hunt appeases municipal politicians. They can assure constituents that “something is being done” to remove whatever risks bears pose to residents while not having to take actual measures to reduce risks (such as fencing in landfills and dumps, and mandating proper storage of “attractants” such as edible garbage).
The spring bear hunt is theoretically restricted to male bears who take no role in rearing cubs (and may even kill them, although that is quite rare). However, the problem is that, in their eagerness, hunters will sometimes shoot a female who has approached the bait, leaving dependent cubs hidden in the woods. Those baby animals die of starvation, exposure, or predation; they simply can’t survive.
And, not only do the bait piles used to attract bears risk habituating the animals to humans as a source of food, but killing bears off in the forest hardly means that bears closer to human habitation won’t wander into town looking for edibles. This can include not only garbage, but grease and other leftovers on barbecue grills, bird seed and suet in bird feeders, fallen apples and other fruit on the ground, and insecure container bins and waste baskets around restaurants, malls, and fast-food emporia.
When I last visited the town of Sudbury, Ontario, which produces the most complaints about human/bear encounters in the province, I found curbside garbage bags everywhere. While the local university had excellent bear-proof containers, they were scarce elsewhere, including at Science North (a major tourist attraction).
So, did the spring bear hunt resolve all that? Nope. It’s been reported that this summer will rival 2015 for the number of reports of “nuisance” bears.
The Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry has just announced plans to hire three additional bear technicians to the one already there, giving the community more experts than any other in Ontario.
We can’t make the world perfect for everyone, but we can do better if we drop the self-serving myths and concentrate on taking responsibility for our actions—and put into practice what we know about both bears and people.
Keep wildlife in the wild,
Barry