CANMORE – A local condo board volunteered to cut down fruit trees after hungry bears feasting on the calorie-rich fruit last year ended up dead or were shipped out of town.
As part of the Town of Canmore’s fruit tree incentive removal program – which has since been updated to cover 100 per cent of removal costs to a cap of $500 – 11 chokecherry trees were removed from the Eagle Ridge condominium property on Eagle Terrace Road on the periphery of town on Monday (March 27).
“As residents of the Bow Valley we need to be responsible for the wildlife and this is one step,” said Ed Connolly, a member of Eagle Ridge’s five-member board.
Connolly recalled a mamma black bear and her cub visiting the neighbourhood to feast on fruit one October night last year, and in the days following another female bear with three cubs was attracted to the neighbourhood.
“People were out on their balconies taking pictures and the little bears were high up in the trees, branches were broken, and we said this is really not good,” he said.
“Then a couple of weeks later we hear the mother bear and three cubs were transported 200 kilometres away … and later ended up being killed … It is unfortunate that things turned out like this.”
In the Canmore area, in 2022, seven bears – six black and one grizzly – were relocated out of the community, according to the province.
One black bear family, a female bear with three cubs, first showed up in Canmore at the end of August last year, making the rounds through various neighbourhoods snacking on berries and fruit trees, hanging out near playgrounds and requiring a police presence one morning as kids went off to school.
The bear family was eventually relocated out of town to an area west of Caroline on Sept. 17, after bolting into a downtown restaurant and devouring bags of brown sugar. Alberta Fish and Wildlife deemed the restaurant was not at fault.
Within two weeks, however, the mamma bear and two of her cubs were back in Canmore. There are conflicting reports on what happened to the third cub – some suspect it perished on the arduous journey back to Canmore while others claim it was spotted in Canmore again.
On Oct. 3, the female bear and her two remaining cubs were killed by Fish and Wildlife officers following reports the bruins were feeding in a downtown commercial dumpster over a period of several nights, and sleeping in nearby residential backyards.
Luis Carlos Flores Aguilar, communications advisor with Alberta Public Safety and Emergency Services, said the three black bears were euthanized for public safety reasons.
“These bears posed a serious safety risk for the community, as they had returned to the same neighbourhood after relocation, got into a restaurant’s unsecured garbage and grease traps,” said Flores Aguilar.
“The bears were extremely habituated and no longer had a fear of humans relying on human food for sustenance.”
In addition, a female and her cub, were captured on Aug. 29 in a backyard on 10th Street in downtown Canmore where they had feasted on crabapples. Both were relocated to an area north of Canmore.
The Bow Valley human-wildlife coexistence task force, which released 28 recommendations in 2018 to reduce the number and severity of encounters between people and bears, identified trees laden with fruit as a significant wildlife attractant.
With a keen sense of smell, opportunistic bears that learn there is food in town will come back again and again, often becoming more bold and brazen, which puts the fate of the bear on the line and residents potentially in harm’s way.
During a March 21 Canmore committee of the whole meeting, Greg Burt, supervisor of municipal enforcement for the Town of Canmore, said 2022 was a busy bear year, noting bear activity was particularly high in the Cougar Creek area.
“I can’t remember which staff member of the province said this, but the quote was, ‘Cougar Creek, it’s like an orchard out there with all of the fruit’,” said Burt.
As a result of heightened bear activity, the municipal enforcement department launched a campaign dubbed Operation Fruit Bearer in Cougar Creek neighbourhoods in August and September, which identified 97 properties with fruit-bearing vegetation.
“Six property owners chose to remove trees in that area and we had 100 per cent compliance rate because we were education-focused on having the fruit removed from the trees,” said Burt.
The municipal enforcement department is developing a commercial bear-proof bin inspection program, particularly following the heightened bear activity in Canmore last summer and fall, which will include weekly patrols.
“We will see officers go out and basically geo-tag all the bins in the community, then go out and conduct inspections, and then if we find any bins that are not compliant with the bylaw, we will work with the property owners to get those resolved,” said Burt.
“[We want] to ensure that they’re compliant, make sure they are not overfull, make sure the recycling isn’t blowing around, make sure the grease isn’t left outside, so we really want to jump on this year as a result of what happened last year.”
Also relocated in 2022 was a young male grizzly bear, which was caught in a trap set up by Alberta Fish and Wildlife near the Canmore cemetery on June 23 and taken to a more remote area several hundred kilometres away.
Generally tolerant of people as it fed on grass and dandelions, the bruin reportedly bluff-charged an individual, who his behind a vehicle to escape the encounter, on June 15. Based on a follow-up investigation, however, it was determined the run-in was more of a surprise encounter.
