(File Photo/paNOW Staff)

By Ben Tompkins

Be(ar)ware

Town of Hudson Bay seeing recent uptick in bear activity

Aug 31, 2023 | 4:55 PM

For community members in the Town of Hudson Bay, it’s very likely that they’ve seen or at least heard of bears in the area in the last little while.

According to the Hudson Bay Conservation Office, they’ve received roughly 30 reports of bear sightings, and have already had to relocate two of them, while four other traps are currently set.

“To be honest, this is the time of year that we traditionally get an increase in the number of bear calls,” Brett Diemert, an inspector with the Conservation Officer Service of the Prince Albert compliance area, told northeastNOW.

“The reason for this is that the vegetation that they eat has kind of turned so it’s not as good for grazing as what it traditionally is, and they’re kind of driven to add as much weight and eat as much as they possibly can. When those two collide, those bears start to move around and that’s when we start to have these issues with them coming into town.”

According to the office, bears don’t typically want to come into contact with humans, however, humans tend to be wasteful, which generates a fair bit of attractants and leads to bears becoming habituated.

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“They form habits and they start to associate humans with food. They start to come into yards and towns searching for essentially those food sources, and when those bears become a habituated nuisance, they become a bit of a public risk and a public safety issue to pets or property and whatnot. That’s when we try to relocate them if we can, or scare them out of communities,” Diemert added.

A way that citizens can help reduce the severity of bear activity is by decreasing the amount or frequency of their created attractants.

This means making sure you’re garbage is handled in an appropriate manner, cleaning grease traps for barbeques or smokers, eliminating garden waste, and taking down bird feeders.

Thankfully, the office explained that most of the time they don’t have problems with bears who see people and become dangerous, while also providing ways to keep that going.

“We tell people just to keep your distance, try to make a wide detour around the bear, if you see the bear, don’t run just calmly back away, and you could keep talking to the bear, just so that the bear is aware of you,” said Diemert.

“If they do encounter a bear that’s aggressive or repeatedly doing damage, regardless of being scared away or not, and continues to come back, they can contact our turn-in poacher/tip line at 1-800-667-7561 or the local RCMP there, and they’ll get a hold of our officers. We can deal with that animal in the area because we don’t want anybody to get harmed out there.”

Diemert also reminded the public to give officers space when dealing with a bear to keep them safe, as trying to help could cause additional issues.

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