Some locals bear-ly aware ... but fines will get their attention
By Kyra Hoggan
Wow – newsflash – the City of Castlegar is actually considering enforcing its own bylaws.
Stop the presses, she says sardonically. That shouldn’t be news at all, if you ask me … it should just be a given ….but the sad part is, I guarantee a hue and cry when residents start having to pay fines. Locals will be outraged; taxpayers up in arms – I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the whole thing became a platform issue in next year’s municipal elections. Which is, to me, proof positive that the phrase “common sense” is a contradiction in terms. The city, the province, the police, animal rights organizations, and Bear Aware have been trying for years to get through to residents that they, and only they, can stop the problem of urban garbage bears … but there’s always a group of people who either isn’t listening or simply doesn’t care. Some just can’t seem to grasp this oh-so-simple cause and effect: if there’s no food for them here, the bears will move on. Therefore, the presence of bears is the fault of those who won’t manage their attractants. Period. It ain’t rocket science. Yet we still see garbages left unsecured, fruit trees left unharvested, windfalls left to rot, and …and this one is my personal favourite … people who, instead of scaring bears off their property, choose to gather the family for snapshots instead, as if this is just another Jellystone Park attraction they’re entitled to enjoy. Good grief. I’m maybe wasting my time detailing these more complicated cause-and-effect scenarios for those who just don’t get it (most of you, Cherished Readers, already understand all this, so I’m preaching to the choir, too), but I’ll give it the old college try anyway. These bears are NOT Yogi and Booboo, for crying out loud. They don’t know the difference between a picnic basket and the family dog, and they don’t realize you think they’re “cute” and thus present no threat to them … and if they did, they wouldn’t care. They’re large, powerful, dangerous wild animals with sharp claws and teeth designed for tearing … letting them feel at home and comfortable on your property is an invitation to tragedy and despair. With allowable fines of up to $2,000, lots of people will feel persecuted when the tickets start showing up …but here’s another cause-and-effect for the soon-to-be disenfranchised: why should the rest of us have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for RCMP and Conservation Officers to respond to bear complaints when we’re not the ones attracting the bears in the first place? The fines rightly put some of the monetary burden on those who feel the rules should not apply to them, or who just can’t bestir themselves to give a damn. If it was up to me, I’d take it a step further, even. I think the city should hire a bylaw enforcement officer dedicated solely to making sure such people are penalized where it hurts most – their wallets – especially when you consider that, not only are the rest of us being penalized through higher taxes, but the bears themselves are paying in much higher coin: their very lives. As many as 70 bears shot, and more than 1,400 complaints, all in a single season? There’s just no excuse. And blaming the Conservation Officers is nothing short of moronic – they’re the first ones to say that shooting bears is the worst part of their jobs, but they simply have no choice. Relocating habituated bears sounds good over the water cooler, but has no practical application in the real world – relocate them where, exactly? There isn’t anywhere to take them, anymore, that isn’t reasonably close to one community or another, and once they’ve been taught to garner their food supply from human garbage, that’s what they’ll look for, again and again, no matter how many times we remove them. By leaving out bear attractants, people are literally training those bears, the bears they find so “cute”, to force officials to shoot them. No matter what angle you come at it from; whether you look at it from a resource perspective, an animal rights perspective or a taxation perspective, fining these people is absolutely the right – perhaps the only – thing to do. Just because we’re not talking about panda bears, doesn’t mean the issue isn’t black-and-white. So I take back what I said earlier. I hope it does become a platform issue – not such that it costs councillors votes, but instead guaranteeing more votes for those councillors who support heavy fines for residents unwilling to manage their bear attractants responsibly. (As a side note, I think it’s only fair to mention that some residents are unable to do so – for example, those with health issues disallowing them from harvesting fruit trees on their property – in which case, a quick call to any city councillor, to City Hall or to Bear Aware would be a terrific first step in problem solving).
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