How to Prepare for Blossoming Bears

Springtime bruins already spotted around the Village

At least three bear sightings in upper Village neighbourhoods have been reported in the past two weeks, and more are expected.

The balmy spring weather is beckoning, and our local bruin buddies are being wakened by the sound of their rumbling stomachs. Bear season is once more upon us.

While some recent local reporting has noted a decrease in bear deaths in Squamish, Whistler and Pemberton last year, according to Lions Bay Bear Smart committee chair Norma Rodgers, the numbers for the past three years in the village are concerning.

Prior to 2002, bear killings in Lions Bay were routine, Rodgers says. That year, concerned volunteers began a campaign to educate residents about how human food waste attracts bears.

The provincial Bear Smart Community program was introduced in 2004, and the Village Council worked with Chief Administrative Officer Lori Pilon to create the Bear Smart Committee (BSC).

"As  the Village installed bear-proof public bins and the BSC implemented their education program about bear food attractants and bear behaviour, the bear kills stopped," says Rodgers. She notes that BSC was disbanded in 2014 because bears were no longer a problem.

"Unfortunately, beginning in 2018, drought conditions meant the start of a few years of meagre spring mountain berry crops. Combined with a number of new residents to the Village who, unaware of the protocols, allowed bears access to their garbage, food waste and food storage, bears became a problem again," says Rodgers.

Two bears were killed in 2022, followed by one bear in 2023 and another in 2024. "This is four bears in three years, which is four bears too many," says Rodgers.

Bear Smart Committee member Neville Abbott says that the spike that started in 2019 happened province-wide, according to statistics provided by the Conservation Officer Service (COS).

"In addition to the combination of bad berry crops and weather," Abbott says, "COVID, more people at home, and in our case many new residents" also contributed to the problem.

Abbott notes that CO statistics show more than 600 bears were destroyed across BC in 2023. (Total number of bears killed by all sources including RCMP is over 700 for that year.)

He says that the result of these steady increases has meant the re-start of many bear smart movements across the province.

"Citizens have started speaking out, COS has made changes to their procedures, including restarting their Bear Smart initiatives and signing up several new communities. Prior to last year, the position of COS Bear Smart coordinator in this area had been vacant for several years. The outcome of these new initiatives was the halving of the bear kills in 2024," says Abbott.

"With everyone working together we need to make this the trend going forward and halve it again to get back to the numbers from a decade ago."

For information on becoming more Bear Aware, check out the BSC site HERE.

Have you spotted a bear this year?

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