Bad news bears: A busy spring for Rossland's ursine scene

By Andrew Zwicker

A very active bear season so far this spring has now met with some unhappy results. At 9:00 AM on Wednesday morning, a black bear was shot by police. Trail RCMP received a call just after 8:00 AM that a couple of large brown coloured bears were in the yard area of a house on McLeod Ave.

“One bear was very aggressive and actually chased some members of a family into the house, explained Sgt. Rob Hawton.” When our officer got there the bear was very defiant. He was not afraid. One of them ran off when the officer arrived and the other wasn't going anywhere. The concern was that we had a dangerous situation there.”

The home in question was the white house on McLeod at the intersection with Spokane St. just below the head of the Centennial Trail. This reporter and his dog were walking past as it happened. The flagging crew for a tree trimming operation on McLeod warned me of a bear across the street. A police officer had pulled into the paved area beside the house at the gate on Centennial trail and was creeping up on the bear, rifle in hand. Not wanting to be there if the bear decided he was going to run in our direction, my canine companion and I were continuing up the KC Ridge Trail when we heard two pops of a rifle.

The bear was shot but not killed, according to Sgt. Hawton. “The bear was shot and did escape the scene. Conservation also attended afterward as well and tracked it into the bush. The feeling is that it holed up in the bush somewhere to die. We don't like shooting bears unless absolutely necessary but that situation was fairly unique, where the bear was quite aggressive and actually chased the family.”

The bear was seen eating garbage in front of the door to the house before being shot.

“When people have garbage out, bears can smell that from a long way away and that attracts them into town, so I want to put a pitch out there as well for people to keep garbage locked inside,” cautioned Hawton.

This incident was not the first report of aggressive bear behavior in Rossland this spring, particularly in the Upper Rossland area around Spokane Street. Earlier this week, there was report of a bear at near the Golden Bear Daycare ramming a car that had stopped for its cubs to cross the road. One Tuesday night, there were two reports of bears breaking into homes, one in lower Rossland and one further down McLeod Ave. Just last week my own dog had a violent encounter with a black bear on the Centennial Trail. As my dog ran up to sniff the bear, he was spooked and after a short wrestle the bear bit my dog's ear. That case was fairly mild and gave us and our dog a reminder about living in bear country. 

Earlier this spring, a number of chicken coops were raided by black bears in a single night in Upper Rossland with other reports as well of chickens being eaten by bears in Lower Rossland.

In an unplanned bit of good timing, the new Bear Aware coordinator in town, Sharon Weider, issued a press release requesting safe composting the morning of the shooting.

“The bears are back and they’re hungry," wrote Weider. “They live to eat and need the equivalent of 64 hamburgers a day (up to 30,000 calories).  Their natural food this time of year is tender green shoots from plants such as horsetails, skunk cabbage and dandelions.  Ants and other insects as well as carrion are fancied by these omnivores.  Bears are opportunistic eaters and while they wander around in the wild, their nose may lead them to  human habitats.”

While her warning came too late for the bear shot Thursday morning, Weider cautions, “Most of the time, garbage attracts bears and may also result in them finding BBQs, bird seed, pet food and farm animal feed.  Bears have incredible memories and will return to a food source again and again, long after the food is gone.  A bear that becomes food conditioned to humans may also become a safety threat and will result in a higher number of bears destroyed unless people are super-vigilant.”

This week's shooting fell on recycling and garbage pick up day. Many composts in the area have been broken into by bears this spring as well. However, according to Weider, both recycling and composting can be done safely, even in bear country.

“This means recycling as much as possible and rinsing food containers before putting them in the bin.  A quick rinse of plastic bags and food wrappings before putting in the garbage will reduce the odors that attract bears.  Composting helps reduce the amount of garbage from households and when done properly, rarely attracts bears.”

If you'd like to learn more, Bear Aware is partnering with Tim Dueck from RDKB to present an evening of “Living with Bears and Composting in Bear Country,” on Wednesday June 23 from 7:00-9:00 PM in the Rossland Arena Lounge. Pre registration is required. Contact Sharon Weider at 250-231-2751 or  if you'd like to attend.

If you've had any close encounters with our ursine neighbours, why not post them as a comment to this article?