Kimberley Bear Aware is back up and running for the 2011 season and have we been busy! I have reports of bears in every neighbourhood of town. And these bears have been getting into trouble. With our long and snowy winter and cool, wet spring our bears are hungry and looking for the easiest, most accessible food sources out there. Many black bears have come into town and found that the easiest way to fill their bellies right now is by eating bird seed from our feeders, exploring our compost and snatching our garbage. In every neighbourhood I have visited lately I have seen garbage strewn all over hillsides, roads and yards.

After having the Bear Aware program in town for so many years, Kimberley residents have been well educated on the attractants that create problem bears. Most of our residents are careful about keeping garbage locked up, take their bird feeders down for the summer (when the birds don't really need it anyhow) and keep their yards free of other bear attractants. Unfortunately, there are a few people out there who are still not living as is necessary in bear country.

Sadly, bears are learning that Kimberley can provide a plethora of easily accessible food. They are becoming most confident in their garbage hunting and are now causing property damage as they break into sheds and garages to grab dinner. They are so comfortable in town that I have heard of one bear spending several nights sleeping in a dog bed on a back deck and two different bears sleeping in the back of pick-up trucks.

When the bears become so human food conditioned and so human habituated they often have to be destroyed. It is almost impossible to re-train a bear so that it becomes a wild bear again. Prevention is the key. Bears will always (hopefully) live around Kimberley and will travel through, we just don't want them to find food and stay.

Let's all do our best to keep our yards and neighbourhoods free from bear attractants.

Bear Aware would like to remind the public to please report all bear sightings to the 24 hour Provincial Hotline at 1-877-952-7277. This will enable us to target educational efforts in order to ensure that our communities remain safe and our bears stay wild.

Kimberley Bear Aware can be reached by calling Shaunna McInnis at 250-520-0411, by e-mail at kimberleybearaware@gmail.com or by visiting us on Facebook at Kimberley Bear Aware.

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Bear Aware is a community education program owned by the British Columbia Conservation Foundation. Bear Aware's mission statement is "to reduce conflict between people and bears with education, communication and innovation".

Kimberley Bear Aware is financially supported by;The Columbia Basin Trust, The City of Kimberley, the Regional District of East Kootenay and The Ministry of Environment.

Bear Aware strives to prevent bears from residing and feeding in communities through public education. Kimberley Bear Aware achieves its objective when bears that enter the city of Kimberley leave without foraging or lingering in town. Bear Aware educates the public in attractant management. The program and its volunteers work with: government, community groups, schools, and local businesses to reduce available in-town food items. The reduction of bear attractants will decrease the number of habituated and human food-conditioned bears in our communities.

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