Daily Sitka Sentinel

Ordinance Aims at Keeping Bears Away

By SHANNON HAUGLAND

Sentinel Staff Writer

The Assembly passed an ordinance on introduction Tuesday that’s intended to make it easier to enforce the law related to the way residents handle trash that attracts bears.

As a result, it should make neighborhoods – and bears – safer, said Sitka Conservation Society executive director Andrew Thoms.

Garbage is strewn around cans on Halibut Point Road in 2015 after a bear was reported in the neighborhood. (Sentinel File Photo)

Thoms and Alaska Wildlife Management Biologist Steve Bethune testified in favor of the ordinance at Tuesday’s regular Assembly meeting. It passed unanimously on first reading and will be up for public hearing and final reading on April 25.

“We have not a problem bear issue as much as problem people and the way they handle their trash,” Bethune told the Assembly.

Sitka Police Chief Jeff Ankerfelt told the Sentinel today that city attorney Brian Hanson “cleaned up” the ordinance and clarified the fine schedule, making it easier to enforce.

The main change to the bear attraction nuisance ordinance is in the penalty for improper garbage disposal, or otherwise attracting bears.

Instead of an “infraction,” requiring a court appearance for police and offender, it will be a “minor offense,” similar to violations of the rule for driving with a handheld device.

“Now it’s a payable fine, and there’s no need to go to court for that – which was overkill,” Ankerfelt said. “In the past, if the person decided to fight a citation in a mandatory court appearance I or the officers would have to go up there (to court). Everybody saves time, including the person who receives the citation. It’s streamlined.”

“This will be a more useful tool for them,” said Thoms, a member of the Bear Task Force.

Fines are $50 for the first offense, $100 for the second, $200 for the third. Subsequent offenses within five years require a mandatory court appearance.

The timing of the ordinance couldn’t be better, Thoms said today.

“Bears are coming out of hibernation, making their way down the mountain,” he said. “What we want is that they don’t find any garbage or food in town. When they do they see it as a food source, they associate town with food and become ‘problem bears.’”

Bethune and Thoms said it takes just one or two incidents to change a neighborhood from one without bears, to one with bears.

“It only takes a few people to make neighborhoods unsafe,” Bethune told the Assembly.

“Maybe one person in the neighborhood is not taking care of the trash, and bears were coming in because of that situation,” Thoms said. “It seems like 90 percent-plus of Sitka knows how to live with bears, and knows what to do with garbage.”

Bear calls take considerable time for police, Fish and Game and Alaska Wildlife troopers, who respond when a resident reports overturned garbage containers or a bear in the yard. Almost every summer authorities have to shoot one or two bears that keep coming back into populated areas.

“Police spend a great deal of time chasing around bears,” Ankerfelt said. “The dangers are related to being attracted to a food source, more often than not garbage.”

The ordinance says residents are not to put out garbage or other attractants before 4 a.m. or after 8 p.m. on pickup day.

Following that should greatly reduce the problem, the chief said.

“I think we can eliminate bears being attracted to garbage, and eliminate the need to kill a bear,” he said.