Rubber Bullets

A radio news item about an Ottawa area “Conservationalist” being outraged with the Municipality of Killarney and the Ontario Government ( Parks) for allowing black bears at the Killarney and Parks dump brought a chuckle this morning.

Black bears have been feeding at dumps in the north for years, however seeing 13 – count them – male bears foraging at once was too much for this staunch environmentalist. He even had to get within 10 metres of the bears to get some photographic proof to show other concerned citizens in an effort to get the bears away from the dump. The bears missed a chance there.

Granted, having so many bears within 5 kilometres of a Provincial Park may not be ideal, especially if the food supply at the dump runs low and the bears start rummaging through campers’ tents for potato chips and knockwurst. Moreover, the town of Killarney and the Parks officials should be able to find a few thousand dollars a month to make sure the dump is covered with fill each day. Perhaps our conservationalist would not mind pitching in a few shekels himself to pay for dump maintenance. Obviously, the deal he got on his entrance fee at the Park gate was too low to cover dump maintenance.

But what made me smile was that he said he was going to contact the organization that lobbied to stop the spring bear hunt a few years ago. They, he warned the interviewer, have a lot of political clout. Pardon me, but some of us northerners might think that part of the current bears-in-the-dump problem was exacerbated by those very same southerners. Bear hunting was cruel, they said, and must be stopped. They were and are, against cruelty. The government acquiesced and the spring bear hunt was cancelled.

Our friend from Ottawa wants to enlist these good-doers to rid the dump at Killarney of the bears, and presumably, this local effort at controlling mother nature will spread all across our province wherever bears visit dumps for their midnight snack. He wants to frighten the bears – make them afraid of man. The current crop of black bears has evolved a little from the days of first contact with humans. They now know that where there are men, there is food. Man actually gathers it up and puts it all in one place to make it easier for the bears, so man is not such a bad critter.

So now, our learned friend says, we must train the bears to fear man by shooting them with rubber bullets. Now, I admit that I have not personally ever been shot with a rubber bullet, but I have a gut feeling that it would hurt. And if being shot isn’t enough, we should spray the bears with bear spray. Granted this fellow is brave enough to get within 10 metres of 13 feeding male black bears with his Sony Handy-cam, but that is about double the range of a can of bear spray. And if I was a bear who had been shot several times with rubber bullets and some idiot now wanted to spray a noxious substance on me, I would get just a little riled up. The next human I saw would be in for a good cuffing!

Further, he said, the wealthy town of Killarney should put an electrified fence all around the dump. They might also want to put up a few signs – for the people who drop off their refuse at the dump, as surely some six-year old kid is going to get a real jolt as they touch the fence. No doubt this fence would be solar-powered, the panels being supplied by the former Stop the Spring Bear Hunt faction in Toronto.

Alas, I am afraid our friend from Ottawa is not going to get much support from the former action group. You see, they are all busy waving placards and yelling “shoo!” at the Canada geese that are befouling their pristine city parklands. They are having so little success in scaring the geese away to the nearest golf course that a splinter group is now going to start lobbying the McGuinty Liberals for a spring goose hunt. Whether the current crop of politicians has any more intestinal fortitude than the Harris-era group remains to be seen.

Meanwhile our Ottawa conservationalist has a final solution: the geese will be live trapped, their wings clipped so they cannot fly back to the city parks, and then they will be released in ‘Northern Ontario’. The black bears, having now been chased back into the deep forest by guns, loud noises and electrical shocks to where there are only a few woodsmen and hermits living, will be able to catch and eat the disabled geese, neatly killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.

I wonder if the bears ever sit around a tasty carcass and reminisce of the good old days – before the white man came along . . .