Living with wildlife isn’t always easy, especially when you are a municipal government tasked with ensuring land use, municipal services and policy decisions conform with being a wild-smart community.
As a result, the Town passed a new bylaw aimed directly at wildlife attractants and how to manage them in a way that does not result in negative human wildlife interactions.
Experts say a fed bear is a dead bear, and that could include what bears would consider fair game as food sources, such as fruit bearing trees. In Canmore, crabapple trees have become a magnet for black bears, with upwards of 20 bruins being captured and removed from the community in 2016.
Sustainability coordinator Lori Rissling Wynn said a fruit tree removal program saw significant success with more than 30 homes subscribing to it and even more signing up on a waitlist.
Rissling Wynn said it is not just fruit trees that attract wildlife into developed areas, but items like food waste, dog food and barbecues.
“We have discussed a number of reoccurring issues with respect to wildlife attractants and some of the challenges and concerns that come with that,” she said. “In addition to concerns identified, we discussed that there is a strong desire in the community to have a bylaw to address these issues and have it stand alone instead of having provisions buried in other bylaws.”
The bylaw addresses the storage of wildlife attractants, fruit and fruit trees, feeding wildlife, birdfeeders and pigeons. While there was some concern from council about the definition of a wildlife attractant – the bylaw passed unanimously at the May 2 meeting.
Mayor John Borrowman said the bylaw reflects the track record and hard work the municipality has put into addressing the causes of negative wildlife human interactions and is in line with decades of work done to address these issues, including the bearproof municipal solid waste collection system.
“I see this as one further refinement of the work where the Town of Canmore has, frankly, been leaders in mountain communities for some time,” said the mayor.
Rissling Wynn said the new bylaw increases public safety, reduces negative human-wildlife interactions, reduces nuisances and allows bylaw officers to respond to situations when they arise.
She said the bylaw supplements what is already happening in the community with respect to wildlife. The bylaw defines an attractant as a substance that is “considered something that may attract dangerous wildlife if it is a food substance or other edible substance accessible to wildlife.”
Feeding wildlife, under the newly approved bylaw, would come with a $500 fine, failure to remove fruit that has fallen from a tree has a $100 fine, while having a bird feeder or nectar (hummingbird feeder) accessible to wildlife is a $100 fine.
