Parks Canada destroyed a black bear and her cub on Sept. 1 after the two animals broke through a window and made their way into a Jasper house while people were home.
The bears had also broken into a yard when people were around, and a storage shed containing food.
“That kind of crosses the line for us, obviously, for human safety risks, so after she did that, it escalates the risk, so we made the decision to destroy [them],” said Tracy McKay, ecologist team leader for wildlife management in Jasper National Park.
The incidents all happened on Sept. 1, but the bears had also eaten from fruit trees and accessed garbage prior to that.
The mama bear had previously been collared and relocated in 2022, and Parks Canada had to haze her and move her out of town in 2023. Following the wildfire, the animal returned to town this summer to feed on fruit trees before getting into other attractants.
“There’s been a lot of new wildlife attractants that have appeared in town since the fire, so anything from food in the rubble, abandoned coolers or garbage from when people evacuated,” McKay said.
“There’s fridges and freezers full of rotting food and even people leaving garbage next to the garbage cans or leaving it outside on the sidewalk.”
McKay emphasized that destruction is always the last resort when dealing with problem bears.
These are the only two bears that have been destroyed since the wildfire, the one exception being a bear that had been euthanized due to extreme burn injuries.
In the last week, only one female and her two cubs have been in the townsite, but McKay said there were four different groups of bears at one point.
While this is less than the 11 bears that came last fall to feed on fruit trees, bears are encountering more attractants in the townsite than usual due to the wildfire, making them more susceptible to food conditioning.
“When a bear starts associating human food with people, they can exhibit more aggressive behavior because they’re looking for that human food,” McKay said.
“So, it just becomes a much higher risk to people, especially when it gets to the point where the bears are breaking into structures where people are present. That shows that they’re just not wary of people anymore, and they’re sort of aggressively looking for that food.”
The wildfire has also resulted in less natural food sources on the landscape. This may make bears more likely to come into town, and they will be hungrier since August is a time for them to fatten up.
McKay noted that food habituation makes both animals and people less safe, and the bears could potentially eat toxic items that make them sick.
“It always comes back to human safety and wildlife safety, and we’re also trying to keep the wildlife wild,” McKay said.
“We want them to have natural behavior patterns, and that when human food sources are available, those behavior patterns shift, and then they go down that continuum of behavior that becomes more and more risky until we have to consider either relocating them [or eventually destruction].”
Residents and contractors are asked not to leave garbage next to bins and to contact the municipality if the bins are full. They can also take their waste to the Jasper Transfer Station.
McKay warned not to leave food or garbage unattended. She added that fruit trees are still a problem in the background and could serve as the initial attractant for bears. Residents are encouraged to remove non-native fruit trees from their properties.
People should stay at least 100 metres away from bears and report all bear sighting to Jasper Dispatch at 780-852-6155.
“If we can start managing those bears sooner than later, we can prevent them from going down that road of becoming food conditioned, so it’s really important to us that people report their sightings in town right away,” McKay said. “That could make a difference to that outcome for the bear.”