With residents still weeks away from re-entry Fort McMurray attracts bears

[NASA’s satellite image shows columns of smoke rising up from the myriad of wildfires, with NASA outlining actively burning areas in red over the Fort McMurray, Alta., on May 16, 2016. Courtesy NASA/Handout via REUTERS]

While residents of Fort McMurray, Alta., are still waiting to return home, the city has gained some new inhabitants. Black bears have been attracted to the city for food.

Nearly 90,000 residents fled Fort McMurray and surrounding areas on May 3 after a wildfire expanded into the northern Alberta city. Officials said this week that residents will be able to re-enter the city in phases beginning June 1 if there are no major setbacks including poor air quality.

The Alberta Ministry of the Environment has confirmed reports of bears in the city and has wildlife officers patrolling the neighbourhoods for signs of bear activity.

“With the city vacant and garbage left in yards and on streets, it is an unfortunate reality that many bears will become habituated to unnatural food sources,” Brendan Cox, spokesman for the Alberta Fish and Wildlife enforcement branch said in an email.

The area around Fort McMurray is known to have a high density of bears, says Mark Boyce, an ecology professor at the University of Alberta and the Alberta Conservation chair in fisheries and wildlife.

He didn’t have an estimate for the number of bears in that area, but said a recent estimate found about 40,000 black bears throughout the province.

Boyce says the abandoned food in people’s homes is an exciting opportunity for bears.

“The bears smell that there’s rotting material in a freezer they may well break into a house to gain access to it,” he says.

Boyce says it’s more likely that bears found within the community will be shot, instead of being trapped and relocated. He explains bears that are relocated often don’t fare well and will travel long distances to return to a community anyway because there’s a source of food.

“Bears are just being bears and they’re not necessarily a problem so long as they’re not being aggressive or tearing into somebody’s house and doing serious damage,” he says.

The lack of people in Fort McMurray also creates fewer deterrents for bears, which have lost a lot of their natural food sources in the fire.

“It’s an unfortunate situation and it creates a real dilemma for fish and wildlife officers, who on one hand they need to deal with public safety issue. On the other hand they get criticized if they kill bears,” Boyce says. “But some of the bears, if they’re behaving badly are potentially a serious safety threat.”

Wildlife officers have set bear traps in the community, Cox said.

“To help ensure the bear is caught and removed from the area before it creates a larger public safety issue.”

After the devastating fire in Slave Lake, Alta., in 2011, conservation officers had to shoot about 40 bears that had come into the community for food.

When residents are able to return to Fort McMurray, Boyce says it will be very important for them to dispose of food waste properly so not to keep attracting the bears.

“They need to get it off their property into a secure dump where it can be disposed of properly and buried,” Boyce says. “Dealing with attractants is clearly the most important thing that people need to be doing.”

Nature will also play a role in keeping bears outside of Fort McMurray, he says, because after a couple weeks and some rain the natural food sources for bears will start to regrow.

“It will alleviate itself quickly,” Boyce says.

Once people return to the community, they can contact the provincial 24-hour Report A Poacher line at (800) 642-3800 about wildlife emergencies.