By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff
Responding to close encounters between people and bears, Sitka police in a two-week period issued more than 40 citations for improper handling of trash and garbage.
Police said two incidents were logged of bears trying to break into houses, as well as reports of a bear killing ducks and chickens on Lake Street and a bear swimming in Swan Lake.
“It’s the law, but more specifically this is a safety issue,” said Police Chief Robert Baty. “If residents aren’t following the trash ordinance, we see more interaction with bears, and someone’s going to get injured .... Additionally it puts officers at risk.”
Officers are often called to neighborhoods where bears are seen getting into garbage. Baty said the outcome is unpredictable when officers haze bears with nonlethal bullets or otherwise try to scare the animals back into the woods.
“If we’re hazing a bear, is that bear going to charge, or run away?” the chief said. “Bears are not predictable: If they want food they can try to defend it.”
Calls have increased in recent weeks; there were nine Thursday night and early this morning, reporting bears in the Indian River subdivision and at Bahovec Court, near the Channel Club.
“Obviously the solution and best practices is to leave our trash in an entryway – or enclosed place – until absolutely necessary to put it out for trash collection,” Baty said. “Clean your trash can with bleach or ammonia, which detract bears.”
Baty said police and wildlife officers believe most calls are related to two bears in particular, which have found easy food sources in two areas of town.
Dumpsters lie on their sides off Halibut Point Road. (Sentinel Photo)
“The more interactions, the more concerned I get,” the chief said.
Baty said he is concerned enough about the apparent habituation of bears to the presence of humans that he has instructed officers to “dispatch” – or kill – problem bears if it can be done safely.
“I don’t see the solution to ‘trash bears’ as shooting them,” he said. “I see the solution as, we don’t create a problem. Bears do what bears do: we’re creating a situation where we have to kill a half dozen bears a year. ... When we have so many interactions a day, we’ve got to do something about it.”
Over his years as police chief in Whittier, Cordova and Yakutat, he has dealt with the same issue. The pattern is generally the same: residents get increasingly lax about proper garbage disposal and bears become used to having easy food in dumpsters and containers. Citations to residents for violating the city’s bear nuisance ordinance are intended to discourage practices that attract bears, he said.
Police Sgt. Lance Ewers agreed that abiding by the ordinance is the key to keeping bears at a distance. There is truth in the saying, “A fed bear is a dead bear,” he said.
Well over 40 citations on improper garbage handling were issued in a recent two-week period.
“Nobody wants a dead bear: once it gets food it gets destroyed,” he said. “If a bear finds a food source it will always go back looking for food from that source.”
On Cascade Creek Road, officers saw where bears had dragged garbage bags into the woods, close to areas where kids might be walking to a bus stop. Farther up the road a bear tried to get into a house through the front door.
“It’s a recipe for disaster,” Ewers said, of the current situation.
The Assembly passed the bear attraction nuisance ordinance in 2008, and amended it in 2012 and 2017, but this is the first year in which a large number of citations have been issued. The ordinance was supported by conservationists as well as police and Fish and Game staff.
The offense, under the ordinance, is to “cause or allow the creation or maintenance of a bear attraction nuisance.”
“Bear attraction nuisance” includes:
– Any amount of putrescible waste, including packaging or other surfaces to which it is adhered;
– Any organic material of a type which has previously attracted a bear to the property within the past five years; or
– Soiled disposable diapers.
It also does not include garbage in an approved container that is placed out at 4 a.m. or later on collection day, and collected or removed no later than 8 p.m. that same day.
Other exclusions are allowed for manure or sewage; living or dead flora or fauna indigenous to the property; or items “completely enclosed in a structure or container when the structure or container has all places of entry covered by a door, window, lid, or other covering which requires hands or tools to open, unless the structure, container or covering has proven ineffective to withstand entry by a bear, whether due to design or improper use, two or more times within the previous year.”
Those being cited are generally in areas where containers are overturned and trash has been strewn by bears, police said.
As with any citation issued for a violation of a city ordinance, a resident has the right to appeal a bear attraction citation in court.
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.
