British Columbia

Not a fan of this article. Typical armchair-conservationist whining about the number last year provides zero context of what happened - this article reads as of it was written by someone in the otherside of the world with that stat as the lone figure to base assumptions on.

"Securing garbage and fruit trees" is written as the boogeyman but the underlying problem was a lack of food in the wild for them. "Urban expansion" is not the cause here - hell a couple of the communities on this list including one I live in have had negative growth.

Wild huckleberry production is probably the single largest indicator to how many bears move into communities and last year they were devastated by the drought. Between this and the pressure from yet another insane wildfire season, bears were driven into human contact, and yes, bad human habits made this a problem from there.

I guess my point is that they weren't simply lured in, as this shoddy journalism suggests. This is yet another consequence of climate change. This will only get worse.

Another point of contention - COs were woefully understaffed and under resourced. Trapping and relocating animals just wasn't an option when you have one trap per town at best. Often RCMP were dealing with bears and I bet you can guess which tools they have at their disposal.

My field recon suggests this year to be better for wild berries in my area maybe, but I'll wait and see. I hope some good studies can surface over this whole ordeal and we can work out better solutions before this gets out of hand next time.