PRINCE GEORGE – It’s only Marchand there have already been bear sightings in the city, such as in Cottonwood Island Park.
“It’s that time of year, right? Things are warming up, bears are coming out of hibernation,” explains Sgt. Eamon McArthur.
McArthur continues by saying that the sighting in Cottonwood park should not come as a surprise because at the end of the day it’s a wilderness park.
McArthur was part of a presentation to City Council recently, and reported that the number of calls for attention rose from just four hundred in 2022 to two thousand last year which admittedly was an unusual year.
“When people see something that they feel is something that needs to be reported, they just call it in. Those calls could be all for the same animal or they could be for multiple animals, right? I guess it varies depending on the situation.”
In 2019, hundreds of bear-proof garbage cans were piloted in the Hart. After three years, in a report to Council, Administration reported that “… the existing latch system is unreliable and problematic in cold weather. Of the 300 carts in the field, 22 have had the special latch completely replaced, a failure rate of approximately 8%. In addition to the complete failures, Solid Waste staff face the weekly challenges of trying to empty carts that are inoperable due to frozen latches or latches plugged with debris et cetera.”
And Sgt. McArthur made the pitch to either approve bear-proof garbage cans or better education.
“We’re going to be working with RCMP, we’re going to be working with Bylaws, and we’re going to be focusing more on the public safety aspect. There are some other avenues where a bear presents itself in a an urban setting and obviously, we’ll deal with those as they need to be dealt with.”
He says it’s tough to determine, after a single year, whether this year will be a repeat of the anomaly of last year.
