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Close encounters with wildlife, one death, worry B.C. residents as incidents rise

One of the things British Columbians like to brag about is their closeness to nature but some residents worry the wildlife is getting a little too close for comfort.

The news has been full of reports recently about close encounters with bears, cougars and even fearless deer.

Officials say there's no evidence the number of potentially nasty inter-species conflicts has actually increased but they're are using this as an opportunity to renew warnings that it's not Yogi and Bambi out there.

"In communities and in the back country, this is always a risk and there are certain things that people can do in order to mitigate that risk," says Mike Badry, wildlife conflicts prevention co-ordinator for the B.C. Conservation Officers Service.

The latest scare follows a spate of bear encounters, including the death of a First Nations elder living in an isolated cabin near Lillooet, about two hours east of Vancouver, who was attacked and partially eaten by a black bear. A B.C. central coast man out picking berries survived a grizzly attack when he apparently encountered a mother and cubs.

Some north-shore Vancouver neighbourhoods have reported more bears foraging in their yards. A jogger in Mount Seymour Park in North Vancouver was saved from a pursuing bear by some dogs.

It's not just bears. Last week, a teenager in the Vancouver Island city of Nanaimo was stalked by a cougar as she cycled towards a school, scaring it off finally by turning around to confront it. Late last week, wildlife officers were forced to shoot a cougar bounding through yards in Sidney, just north of Victoria.

Even cute and cuddly deer have become a problem. People report aggressive ungulates, including an angry doe that stomped an aged toy poodle to death in Langley, a Vancouver suburb, in late June.

The reasons for these encounters aren't complicated. Urban expansion has cut into wildlife habitat for years, though that doesn't explain the death of 72-year-old Bernice Evelyn Adolph.

"For predatory attacks by black bears, it's very rare," says Badry.

The recent Vancouver-area incidents are thought to be connected to the unseasonably large snow pack in local mountains, forcing adult bears and their cubs to forage lower down for food.

"If there isn't a good availability of natural food sources for bears, certainly they're going to be looking elsewhere to find that food and they're going to get drawn into communities," says Badry.

B.C. black bear populations are quite healthy, he says. Regular bear presence in residential areas has a lot to do with them learning that food is readily available there. That means educating people to lock down their garbage and remove ripe and fallen fruit from trees.

Despite the recent publicity, the number of reported bear encounters, including destroyed bruins, was actually down at the end of May, according to government figures. There were 2,210 black bear and 109 grizzly reports, compared with 2,468 and 76 respectively in the same period of 2010. Officers and others had to destroy 70 black and three grizzly bears so far, compared with 94 and three in 2010.

Badry believes it's because the message to minimize "attractants" is getting through.

"That's why we're seeing that over the long term, conflicts with bears, particularly the sort of the number of bears that have to be killed due these conflicts, has been decreasing," says Badry.

B.C. cougar attacks are comparatively rare, even on Vancouver Island, which has the densest population in North America. Between 2000 and 2009, 16 people were hurt but none killed by the big cats, compared with the previous decade that featured two deaths and 16 injuries. There have been none since.

Unlike bears and deer, who attack to protect their young, all cougar incidents are predatory, says Badry. The teenage girl who confronted the cougar in Nanaimo did just the right thing.

"Once you see that cougar, you can act more aggressive and often most times deflect any kind of attack, and even if that attack happens be able to fight off a cougar."

Wildlife officials don't track aggressive-deer reports but Badry says there's a key parallel with problem bears.
They've learned to live closely with humans, who don't see them as threats and allow them access to food sources.

Habituated deer with fawns are quick to react defensively.

"They've learned that they're not the ones that have to be afraid," says Badry.

Urbanized deer have even lost their fear of dogs - witness a widely seen video last year of a doe stomping a large dog in Cranbrook, B.C., that it saw as a threat to its fawn.

"When they see a dog when they have young fawns, they've actually learned that they can be the aggressor," says Badry. "It's when people get in the way they end up getting hurt."

People need to reassert their dominance over wildlife and rekindle the fear response by making noise or tossing rocks at an animal's feet, he says, so they "realize that you're not something that should be tangled with."

(CBC Photo)