Bear destroys vehicle to get at garbage




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POSTED: 17 October, 2008

Bear destroys vehicle to get at garbage

by Lailani Mendoza

When Matthew Howardson walked out to his car the morning after Thanksgiving, he discovered that a bear had broken into his vehicle to get at the garbage bags left inside.

Howardson said he went to the transfer station but it was closed. He noticed people had dumped garbage bags outside the fence. "I didn't want to contribute anymore to dumping the garbage there," said Howardson, "so I decided to just go home and leave the garbage in my car."

He left one garbage bag in the trunk and another in the back seat. Howardson said he was planning to take the garbage to the transfer station after he got off work. Unfortunately, the bear caught a whiff of it and left his '99 Chevy Cavalier to pieces.

"I thought I heard the (car) alarm going off last night at around 10 p.m. I stuck my head out the window and didn't see anything, so I thought maybe it was just my roommate watching TV."

"When I got up this morning, my passenger window was smashed in. The tail light on the passenger side was ripped off my car. There were obvious signs that it tried to pull the trunk open. The garbage bag was all strewn about. My car was beat up."

Although he didn't actually see the bear, Howardson said that there was fur all over the car's interior.

Kamloops conservation officer Kent Popjes said it can be a challenge to find a place for garbage where a bear can't smell it, but a car-or any vehicle-is definitely not the place for it.

"I heard there was a bear wandering around (in Sun Peaks) putting his paws up in the back of pickup trucks. I think somewhere along the way, he got rewarded from getting food from a vehicle," he said.

"They can certainly smell inside the vehicles too, so it's better just to keep it in the garage (or in the house), depending on what the options are for the person."

Once a bear finds garbage or food in a vehicle, it will remember to check out vehicles the next time it comes out looking for food, even if it only happened once. It's a learned behaviour that becomes reinforced every time it makes a successful find.

"Keep it inside and away from open windows where (a bear) can smell it, especially now that we've had a bear that's entered residences. We're trying to trap this one bear, but until that time you've got to be pretty careful with your stuff ."

To report bear incidents or problem bears, please call B.C. Conservation at 1-877-952-7277.