Our family has lived for decades at the edge of the forest in North Vancouver’s Seymour River valley. Bear encounters are not rare. We’ve had these animals in our yard countless times, in our garage a few times, and once in the kitchen. That latter event taught us not to leave the front door open, particularly when a ripe bag of garbage sits in the pantry closet.

I demanded the bear leave immediately. He looked at me, and he looked at the desired prize. After a moment of consideration, he departed but had the garbage bag in his mouth. While some people worry about black bears, they typically avoid close contact with humans.

A few days ago, a grandson told me a black bear was in the neighbourhood. He learned that because a well-meaning person was on the street honking a car horn and shouting about the animal.

I usually report sightings to the good people at the North Shore Black Bear Society. I did that and mentioned the person sounding the alarm. Executive Director Holly Reisner provided a useful response:

We know that we have bears calmly roaming through our neighbourhoods all the time.  They are looking (mostly with their noses) for food sources, and are not interested in people.

It also shows that many bears do not respond to hazing with loud noises.  Sometimes a bear will initially respond, but they are very intelligent animals, so they quickly learn that nothing bad actually happens to them when a horn is honked or an airhorn is blown.

The best tool we have to prevent bear encounters, or to try to move a bear along, is our human voice.  Bears recognize it and know that a human is nearby.  While our bears are used to living among us, they don’t like to be very close to us, so in the vast majority of cases, hearing our voice just gives them an opportunity to either slowly move away, or just ignore our presence…

The bears apparently enjoy our quiet neighbourhood. On the weekend, a young pair passed through our backyard and then spent considerable time in our neighbour’s yard. I assumed these were littermates that had been chased away by the mother and were not yet living independently. The North Shore Black Bear Society suggests these were likely male and female involved in mating activities.

Perhaps I was naive. Experts at the bear society had a different idea:

We think there is one male and one female bear.  It’s a little bit late for mating season, but these two were possibly showing that behaviour.  Mating is one of the few times when bears will spend time with one another, and they will sometimes hang around together for several days.

We are so lucky to get to see these amazing animals in our backyards! 

I agree with that final statement. At our house, we’re making major changes to our landscaping and, in the unlikely event that money remains in the budget, I would love to acquire a chainsaw carving of a bear and have it peering over a rock garden.