Local winery recognized for their efforts with bear conservation

PRINCE GEORGE— Northern Lights Estate Winery received a Special Recognition Award from the British Columbia Conservation Officer Service.

“Ultimately what they’re doing is going to save bears,” Chief Conservation Officer Doug Forsdick says. “It’s going to help to educate the public. It’s going to help remove attractants and really that’s what we’re all about at the end of the day.”

The owners and operators of Northern Lights Estate Winery, Pat and Doug Bell, started a program with the intentions of preventing bears from coming into conflict in the Prince George area.

“It’s really a neat program,” Doug Bell says. “We actually collect apples from around Prince George in association with the Northern Bear Aware Society (NBAS) to try to mitigate that human-bear conflict which is very prevalent when people have apples that they don’t pick off of their trees that get rotten and of course attract the bears to their neighbourhoods.”