Was killer Canmore handled properly?

The headline in today’s (June 7, 2005) Calgary Herald – “Was the killer bear handled properly?” – only hints at the complexity of factors that led to the tragic deaths of Isabelle Dubé and Bear #99 last Sunday. The real question, and answer, may rely less on handling bears than it does on handling people and human development.

There is more than a little irony at the centre of this tragedy. Isabelle was a friend of mine. Our daughters are about the same age, and we would run into each other at birthday parties and soccer games. We mountain biked and skied together, or at least as together as my tired old legs would allow. On more than one occasion we talked about the growing conflict between wildlife and recreation. She was concerned, and rightfully so, that rampant development had given golfers and homeowners the lion’s share of the land and left the rest of us to fight over the scraps.

For years, a war of sorts has been raging in Canmore, one I wrote about in Explore magazine in 2002. Starting in the 1970s, the government of Alberta has sold off thousands of acres of Crown land surrounding the town of Canmore, hoping it would grow into a tourist destination to rival Banff.

Rightfully concerned with the effect of rampant development on their community, Canmore residents demanded that limits be placed on development to ensure that enough of the surrounding landscape was maintained in its natural state for the use of recreationists and wildlife. Several studies, hearings and open houses were conducted on the issue, and all recommended that functional wildlife corridors be maintained to keep wildlife populations healthy and, more important, to keep people safe.

An example: In 1993, Martha McCallum and Dr. Paul Paquet conducted a study and wrote a wildlife management plan for Stone Creek Properties, now (ironically) SilverTip, the community behind which Isabelle was killed. McCallum and Paquet wrote: “The provision of wildlife corridors is probably the most important mitigation measure to protect people from bears (my italics) by providing the option of an undeveloped travel route for bears.”

They go on to say that “functional wildlife corridors require both protection of continuous corridors and prevention of wildlife disturbance within the corridors.… Wildlife corridors can be protected from human disturbance by providing adequate park and recreation facilities adjacent to corridor areas. This approach will reduce the demand for recreation within the corridors and provide a transitional buffer between the corridors and other human development.”

This sage advice, provided 12 years ago, was largely ignored. Alberta’s provincial government knowingly approved wildlife corridors that didn’t meet the minimum recommendations set out by some of North America’s best biologists, and it approved development plans that were sure to create conflicts between user groups and between people and wildlife.

This, accompanied by less than precautionary human and bear management practices, has led to many a dead grizzly bear and several human injuries since 2000, and is as much to blame for Isabelle’s death as the handling of Bear #99 in June 2005. These tragedies will only continue as more houses are built and more people squeezed into the Bow Valley.

As McCallum and Dr. Paquet prophesied those many years ago, the heedless development and poor planning that characterize Canmore inevitably breeds conflict. Environmentalists blame developers for destroying wildlife habitat and the critters that call(ed) it home. Developers claim they’re being prevented from earning a fair return on their investment, and the provincial government berates town council for being obstructionists. Recreationists attack environmentalists for putting the needs of animals ahead of those of people. And then people and bears start bumping into each other in what little space is left and eventually, inevitably, someone, a caring mother and a beautiful friend, dies. All because of poor planning and more than a tinge of greed.

The real question, and one I think Isabelle would like us to answer, is: What now? How can we prevent a similar tragedy from happening again?

Canmore must become a truly BearSmart community. This can be accomplished by adopting and implementing well-recognized BearSmart guidelines that allow people and bears to co-exist. It won’t be easy and it will take leadership (and money) from the instigators of this fiasco, the government of Alberta. But that is the “obligation” that accompanies the “right” to turn an important wildlife movement corridor into a resort community that will one day rival the great excesses of Aspen and Vail.

We don’t have a choice, not really. Sitting, as it does, on the doorsteps of Banff National Park, Canmore will never be able to entirely rid itself of bears—I’ve had the pleasure, on a run of my own, of watching a sow and her cubs dashing through the nearby forests on more than one occasion—and we’ve long since matured past the point of shooting every bear that dares wander into plain view. But we can make the Bow Valley safer for both people and the bears with which we share it.

The good news is we’re almost there. Canmore has already done an excellent job of securing the attractants—garbage, bird feeders, compost—that once lured bears into town. Now we need to develop a plan that will minimize human-bear conflict in the wildlife corridors.

This is where Alberta Fish and Wildlife can do a much better job of keeping bears and people apart. When a bear is in the area, signs must be posted to warn residents and trail users to stay away, and trails (and golf courses) must be physically closed to human use so the bear has a chance to move on without getting into trouble. If the bear insists on crossing the boundary into town, bear-human co-existence specialists must monitor it around the clock, delivering aversive conditioning (noise, rubber bullets, barking bear dogs) until it learns to move on (which may take up to a week).

Only if the bear continues to be a nuisance should it be relocated within its home range–and continuously monitored and aversively conditioned if it tries to return. Had these precautions been taken with #99, a young sub-adult ripe for a firm tutorial in the ways of living with people, this tragedy may well have been avoided.

A very few bears will not graduate from the program. If, after a continued and intensive effort, the bear can’t learn to live in the world we have created for it, it will have to be destroyed. But by doing everything possible to keep people out of its path, this last resort will rarely need to be executed.

All of these recommendations have been made and ignored before, largely, perhaps, because they are expensive to implement. But it is also because government officials are gun-shy after some people fiercely opposed the management (and limitation) of human use in the wildlife corridors around Canmore. People, including recreationists, can help prevent a similar tragedy, and ensure Isabelle did not die in vain, by encouraging the government to implement a bear-human conflict management plan and by supporting the limitations on human-use that will necessarily be a part of it.

Like it or not, we must play the game with the cards we have been dealt, and the name of the game now is keeping people safe and bears alive in a poorly planned municipality smack dab in the middle of bear country. The lion’s share of this task is the responsibility of the provincial government, but it will require the cooperation of the entire community. It doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the amenities Canmore has to offer, but it will mean we—golfers and mountain bikers and developers alike—will need to exercise a little more restraint.

Under the circumstances, I think Isabelle would have wanted us to at least try.