Raging wildfires in the Northwest Territories are driving black bears onto Yellowknife's deserted streets.
According to wildlife officer James Williams, his team began seeing an increase in bear reports immediately following last week's evacuation order.
"There was such an up and go during the evacuation that a lot of people, it's not their fault, but their garbages were still full," Williams told CTVNews.ca from Yellowknife. "Then after a few days, we did notice that there was a high number of bears coming in, and that could be due to the fires pushing them this way."
Williams is one of nine officers patrolling the region for the territory's Department of Environment and Climate Change. While grizzly and polar bears can be found in other parts of the Northwest Territories, the vast boreal forest surrounding Yellowknife is primarily home to black bears.
"All of our officers on the wildlife side, I'm pretty proud to say that all of us are Indigenous," Williams said. "We know the area pretty well and we have a lot of knowledge of tracking bears."
With the help of other agencies like the RCMP, the team has been patrolling Yellowknife and the trails surrounding the city by foot and all-terrain vehicle. While they normally try to trap and release the animals, or deter them with rubberized bullets, some of the bears keep coming back.
"Our number one priority is to protect life and property of the people and city of Yellowknife and as a territory as a whole, and when it comes down to it, sometimes we do have to dispatch some of these animals, but it's in a most respectful way as possible," Williams explained. "All of our officers, we have a pact that we do a traditional prayer whenever we do have to dispatch an animal."
With the region ablaze, Williams notes there are fewer places to safely release captured bears right now, and that some nuisance animals have been put down since the evacuation.
While Yellowknife is used to seeing bears at this time of year, hot conditions leading up to this summer's wildfires had already caused increased bear activity in the city as the animals sought food to replace dwindling patches of wild berries. Williams says firefighters working deep in the bush have also been encountering the animals, which typically run away. No injuries or property damage has been reported.
"On the fire line, there have been a couple of bear encounters that I can confirm, but they were just close encounters," Williams said. "A lot of the time the bear's more spooked than yourself when you are in their territory, you know, because they're just not used to having people come out of nowhere, especially in remote areas like where the fire crews are being dropped off by helicopters."
Wildfires remain about 15 kilometres from Yellowknife's outskirts, where teams are working to defend the city and push back the blaze. All but essential workers in the city of 20,000 were ordered to leave by Friday. Williams says more reports of bears came in Tuesday night.
"Everyone here in Yellowknife that are here working as essential workers, we're all working really hard just trying to protect our city," Williams said. "It's really great to see everyone working together."
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