Editor: I have been reading the articles about bears with a heavy heart.
First I am going to say that I believe that these days, a fed bear is indeed a dead bear. I don’t have stats to back it up, but I suspect that the relocation of a wild creature to unfamiliar territory is seldom a good outcome for the bear and we have seen others destroyed out right.
Second I am going to tell you that I live in a home with two very old crabapple trees in the yard. We harvest much of the crop for apple sauce and other preserves and these days we pick the rest to be used for pig food. We used to enjoy the fact that bears stopped and ate up our leftover fruit on the way to their winter dens. It felt like a privilege to see them. It never scared us.
People and bears lived in this valley for generations without any serious problems. Families had gardens and compost bins and apple trees and raspberry canes. I’m told here in Exshaw that there were even grape vines for making wine back in the day.
We failed the bears badly when we allowed the endless development of housing and tourist accommodation and golf courses in the very areas that they used to find abundant natural food. That is the reason we are seeing bears in town so often. Not because they find crabapples such a fine food, but because town now exists where there used to be room for bears.
It may come that rules about fruit bearing trees will have to be put into place, common sense being as uncommon as it is.
We once had a serious bear and garbage issue in the Bow Valley and we fixed that. I sincerely hope that we can find more creative ways to solve this problem that we ourselves made. It is not a bear problem, it is a people problem.
Rose Reid,
Exshaw
