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BEAR ACTIVITY SUMMARY FOR THE BOW VALLEY
(Banff National Park East Gate to Bow Valley Provincial Park) For the period: July 31 to August 7, 2020
The information below is based upon a compilation of bear information provided by government agencies and unconfirmed sightings reported by the public over the last week. It is not intended to be used as a real-time, complete record of where bears are in the valley.
SUMMARY
Bears continue to be been seen on both sides of the Bow Valley and throughout K-Country in search of buffaloberries, which has also resulted in more warnings and closures being put in place. With the bears focused on berries it is now more important than ever to make sure people are making lots of noise to alert them of your presence! More useful advice can be found in this recent article.
Garbage again is a major concern with people leaving garbage along trails and in day use areas. It is YOUR responsibility to make sure that your garbage finds its way into a bear proof bin or if the garbage bin is full find another bin or pack your garbage out with you, and that includes human waste and diapers! Being exposed to unnatural food sources such as garbage puts wildlife at risk and increases public safety concerns around human wildlife interactions.
During this busy summer season, there have been many bear and wildlife jams, which puts unnecessary stress on the animals and causes public safety concerns. Motorists should obey posted speed limits and slow down near roadside wildlife but don’t stop and cause (or be part of) a bear jam on the highway. Keep moving in order to give bears the space they need to feed and to help combat roadside habituation of wildlife.
It is also a good idea to “Know before you go” by finding out where the bear warnings are and planning accordingly; avoiding these areas can also reduce your risks of encounters. Trail users need to mentally prepare themselves to handle bear encounters (think about what they will do before they head out on the trail) and expect to run into a bear while out on the trails! This short video we made about how to handle (and avoid) bear encounters can help you with this mental preparation. Remember to carry bear spray to use in case of accidental close encounters. Know where your bear spray is on your person (in an easily accessible location) and be comfortable getting it out!
A positive, proactive step that you can take is to remove fruit (such as crabapple, mountain ash and chokecherry) from your trees NOW before you have a bear in your tree. Leaving fruit in your trees can attract bears into residential areas, putting bears and people at risk. It is YOUR responsibility to make sure that bears do not have a reason to linger in your yard.
WildSmart has pruning shears and extendable fruit pickers that can be borrowed (free of charge) to assist Bow Valley residents in removing fruit and berry bushes from their property. Please send an email to info@wildsmart.ca to make arrangements to borrow the fruit picking equipment.
Extendable fruit picker that can be borrowed from WildSmart
What are the Bears eating today? Part 4 in a Series by Derek Ryder, Wildlife Ambassador & IGA Interpretive Guide
Living and recreating safely in bear country means understanding many things, from signs that bears are around to what to do in a bear encounter. As we wander in the wilderness (or even in town sites) we are travelling in bears’ homes: their living areas, dining areas, and even their bathrooms. Recognizing food that bears are currently eating can help raise your awareness of the possibility that bears are around where you are at any given moment. In this series of articles, each month, we’re going to look at what bears are eating right now, and for the next few weeks.
Welcome to berry season! When it comes to berries, of course we endlessly talk of shepherdia, and that’s an absolutely prime source of berries for bears. This year appears to be a bumper crop for shepherdia in the Bow Valley – but what if it was not? There are places in K-Country where there are a LOT fewer shepherdia bushes, or where the berry crop just isn’t as good. If you’re a bear living in that space, what berries do you eat? Well, one berry you DON’T eat are strawberries. Why? We know strawberries are delicious and sweet. Why do bears NOT eat strawberries?
The simple answer is “density”. Anyone who has walked through an alpine meadow can find lots of strawberry plants, but there just aren’t a lot of berries. Bears are eating 200,000 shepherdia berries a day to get the calories they need at this time of year. Anyone who has gone wild strawberry hunting knows Mr. Bear would basically have to lick square miles of ground to find that many strawberries – and he still probably wouldn’t get that many. So while strawberries are tasty, bears just don’t bother, since they’re too much work for too little reward.
But raspberries… ooh, wild raspberries (rubus idaeus)… now THERE’S a berry bears love. Members of the rose family, and very prickly, but the bears don’t care about the prickles; their lips and tongues are tougher than ours. Raspberries tend to grow in patches of a dozen or more plants. With raspberries, year-old, yellower-leafed canes are FAR more productive for berries than new green canes. Each year-old, berry-bearing plant can have a hundred or more berries. This means that a patch could contain 5-10 kg of berries if you got them all. More nutritionally dense than shepherdia, bears don’t have to eat as many raspberries, but their needs are still on the order of 30-40 kg of raspberries a day (and the more the merrier). Find 8-10 patches a day, and bears are happy – and 10 patches are easy to find in the right areas.
Research done in the mid 1980’s in the Sheep River area by loyal WildSmart weekly bear report reader Anne Weerstra (by collecting scat and analyzing it… fun job) showed that wild raspberries form a significant part of the diet for the black bears in the area she studied. Raspberries in 1984 at this time of year were in almost 40% of bear scat; shepherdia was only in about 30%. In 1985, raspberries had ballooned to almost 55%; shepherdia was below 10%; the data suggests that wasn’t a great shepherdia year. You can read her paper on it here. I want to thank Anne for passing on suggestions for these articles, too.
Wild raspberries like disturbed ground and gravelly soils, so (just like dandelions) often grow along roadsides and where people are. Locally, the raspberry patches near my house are dined on annually, as are the ones I know of in the Heart Creek area. Raspberry patches also surround Quarry Lake (where the raspberry pictures accompanying this article were taken) and on the power line, which often creates conflict issues when the bears move in to get them (and they do most years). But you will also find wild raspberries in stony meadows at higher elevations, and the grizzlies are good at finding them, too.
They verge on invasive; one volunteer raspberry plant got into my garden a few years back, and despite my best efforts to control it, I am now fighting 5 plants. They propagate not only by seed but by suckering, putting underground root shoots out meters from the original plants. On the bright side, I’m good at collecting the berries I do get (they’re delicious), and most berries don’t show up until Year 2, giving me lots of time to control the attractant.
While people have been eating (and cultivating) raspberries for a long time, the leaves are also of interest. If the leaves are fresh and green, they can be made into a tea, but avoid using wilted leaves as they can be toxic. Some sources purport that raspberry leaves contain compounds (including “fragarine,” identified and named in 1941) that have stimulating effects on the muscles of the uterus, so raspberry teas have been commonly used for centuries before, during or after childbirth. Its real efficacy remains unproven, however.
CURRENT WARNINGS AND CLOSURES
Click here for the complete list of all Alberta Parks warnings and closures in the Bow Valley and Kananaskis Country.
Click here for the complete list of all warnings and closures in Banff National Park.
Here is a list of some Annual Closures in Kananaskis Country.
Click here for current information from Alberta Parks about visiting their parks during COVID-19. Click here for current information from Parks Canada about visiting their parks during COVID-19.
For more information on areas in the Bow Valley frequented by bears at this time of year visit our human-bear conflict summary map.
AND NOW SOME PAWS-ITIVE NEWS
In an effort to reduce conflict between bears and people in Canmore, the Town of Canmore is running a Voluntary Fruit Tree Removal Incentive Program. Homeowners in the priority areas identified on the map below are invited to express their interest in participating in the program which will cover 50% of the cost of removal to a maximum of $300 if they use an arborist or tree removal service to remove their tree. Homes in Priority 1 areas will be targeted first, followed by Priority 2, and finally any areas outside the priority zones. More information and details about how to participate can be found here on their website.
Please remember BEARS CAN BE ENCOUNTERED ANYWHERE, ANYTIME!
Report any sightings of a bear, cougar, wolf or any aggressive wildlife in Kananaskis Country or the Bow Valley to Kananaskis Emergency Services at 403.591.7755