How much should we be worrying about the NWT’s dump bears?

Pick any community in the Northwest Territories and bears getting too familiar with the dump is likely to be a local issue.

Bears at the landfill can be bad news. They can put residents and workers at risk, and the dump contents might prove inedible or dangerous to the bears themselves.

Biologists have documented bears of all kinds – from black bears and grizzlies to polar bears – subsisting on trash, with the likes of wood, metal and even toxic substances like antifreeze found in dead bears’ stomachs.

Communities can end up investing large sums in efforts to solve the problem, like electric fences that first need to be installed and then require a lot of maintenance to be effective.

Is that worth the effort? And what’s the best way for northern communities to deal with the perennial interest bears have in a collection of human trash?

The Town of Inuvik is working to install an electric fence at the community landfill. This summer, councillors heard the fence should be in place by September and electrified by the winter.

“It’s important to not allow bears into an unnatural food source, because then that leads to more problems,” said the town’s mayor, Peter Clarkson.

Clarkson told Cabin Radio he has seen a distinct change in the bear population at Inuvik’s landfill.

“When I first moved here, 38 years ago, it was just black bears, but now it is all grizzly bears,” he said. 

While black bears still appear on the edge of town or on the highway, said Clarkson, they no longer appear at the dump “because they have all been pushed out,” such is the attraction of the facility.

Work on the electric fence will be completed during the coming hibernation season, he said.

Relocation is sometimes an option for bears. In 2021, a bear and two cubs found at a dumpster outside a Yellowknife restaurant were ultimately tranquilized and moved back into the wilderness beyond the city.

Clarkson, though, prefers the fence, arguing that relocation “has never, ever worked” because bears can’t be moved far enough from Inuvik to make a difference.

“Think of people,” he said. “If somebody committed a murder in your community, and you move them to another community, would that solve the problem? It doesn’t for people, and it doesn’t for bears.”

The mayor couldn’t recall any incidents of bear attacks at the landfill, but he said the risk remains – and wildlife officers have already had a busy summer in the town, where around 3,000 people live. Three bears were killed in June alone over concerns about aggressive behaviour and risk to Inuvik residents.

Not that electric fences are guaranteed to solve the problem.

Fort Smith, for example, got into trouble with the territorial government a year ago because of a landfill fence that was reportedly damaged during a training exercise.

In a letter posted to a regulatory registry, a Department of Environment and Climate Change water resource officer wrote: “Poor management at the town’s facility is an act of negligence.”

The officer suggested the town could be charged under the Wildlife Act with attracting and feeding bears, and said an order to fix the broken fence would be issued if action was not taken “soon.”

“It’s difficult to find a contractor who wants to come or has the expertise and the materials to come and work on an electrified fence here,” acting senior administrator Emily Colucci told Cabin Radio at the time.

“That was one of our biggest holdups, just getting actual quotes, finding someone who could do the work, and then getting the materials here.”

In Fort Liard, hamlet senior administrator John McKee frames the bears as more of a workplace hazard than a problem that needs solving.

“We just take precautions,” he said of the bears at the dump outside the Dehcho community of around 500 people. “If crews are out working, we have somebody that’s on bear watch with them, so there’s no safety issues.” 

The Fort Liard area is home only to black bears. In the past few years, NWT government data suggests a handful of bears a year end up being killed by wildlife officers in or near the community.

Fort Liard has tried electric fences, but McKee said they come with a “very high-maintenance cost keeping it clean and keeping it in good working order.”

Instead, his preferred approach to black bears is to “usually just scare them away or remove the crews until the area is clear.”

Andrea Morehouse has spent nearly 20 years specializing in the science behind conflict between the likes of bears and humans. 

Morehouse said the food source that dumps provide, and the consequent attraction for bears, pose “a safety issue for people as well as ultimately for the bears, too.”

She believes there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution for the problem of bears arriving at the landfills of small northern communities, but thinks the best approach is to “try and prevent them from accessing attractants or getting into trouble in the first place.”

Morehouse, like Clarkson, isn’t convinced that relocation can be consistently effective. GNWT carnivore biologist Abbey Wilson agrees, saying that approach is especially difficult in the territory.

“All of our roads lead to communities,” said Wilson.

In a previous job in Alberta, Wilson said driving a bear down the road to find a wild space where they could be released was “much easier.”

In the NWT, she said, “any time you’re driving, you’re going to be putting a bear close to a community.” Using a helicopter instead, while theoretically an option, comes with “all kinds of logistical, cost and safety issues,” she added.

Wilson said communities should instead focus on approaches like covering waste at landfills, using bear-proof garbage cans and increasing public knowledge, aiming to push the bears to look elsewhere for their meals.

Morehouse said expecting both bears and people to change their behaviour “is going to take some time,” but is necessary.

“These are the problems,” she said, “and it takes a collaborative approach to work on it and to acknowledge that it’s not going to be fixed overnight.”