HAPPY VALLEY-GOOSE BAY, N.L. — A bear cub was recently struck by a vehicle and killed on Route 520 in Labrador, which isn’t the first time, Happy Valley-Goose Bay resident Dawn Crocker says.
Bears are a common sight on Route 520, the highway that connects Happy Valley-Goose Bay and North West River/Sheshatshiu. They sometimes eat garbage they find on the side of the road, and sometimes people feed them.
Crocker said the issue of people feeding bears on the highway has been going on for a long time, and people need to stop.
“They’re wild animals, they’re not to be fed, they’re not to be used as a photo prop,” she said.
“They’re wild animals, they’re not to be fed, they’re not to be used as a photo prop."
— Dawn Crocker
Crocker said she takes the road a few times a week and it shocks her how many people she has seen using food to try to get bears to come closer for photos.
Crocker said in addition to the bears being hit by vehicles, like the cub, she is concerned that the bears will become too familiar with humans and expect to get food at every encounter, which could be dangerous.
“They’ll put A and B together and someday this bear could come to a vehicle looking for food, expecting food, and how will they react?” she said. “There are people silly enough to put food on the hood of their vehicles to get a better photo, or put it on the side of the road. It’s ridiculous. I’ve seen that.”
The concerns Crocker raised are echoed by an official with the provincial Department of Fisheries and Land Resources. Senior wildlife biologist Wayne Barney told SaltWire Network that people feeding bears is a concern and, in the worst-case scenario, could lead to bears having to be put down.
“Those bears become so habituated to human presence, they’ll become a nuisance bear, a problem bear, and once that happens the bear's fate is put at risk,” Barney said.
He said there are a couple of ways a bear can become habituated to humans on a highway, one of the main ones being people feeding them from vehicles.
‘It’s a mobile garbage source, really,” he said. “They recently came out of hibernation. It isn’t greened up yet to what they’d like. It’s a food source and they can make that association.”
It can make them less shy around humans and can greatly increase the chances of bear-human conflict, Barney said.
He said once they become habituated to human contact it can be hard to break them of the habit, and it is far more dangerous for humans to encounter a habituated bear.
Evan Careen is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter covering Labrador for SaltWire Network.
