by IAN BAILEY, August 6, 2007 in theGlobe and Mail

A chaotic encounter between a black bear and climbers tackling a path near North Vancouver’s popular Grouse Grind Trail has experts issuing sharp reminders to outdoor adventurers of the need to remember some basics in dealing with bears in this province.

“You can’t blame people for not knowing what to do. Just give them the basics: Try to let the bear have an escape route and move away from it, and don’t try to corner it and don’t try and feed it,” said Jeff Palm, one of two provincial conservation officers drawn into Saturday’s incident.

“The average British Columbian might know that, but, for the most part, a lot of people are visiting British Columbia and Canada right now in the holiday season, and they don’t know very much about bears at all.”They really have a tendency to scream and run in the other direction, and draw conclusions when they see bears and hear other people screaming.”

No one was injured in the incident Saturday, but it prompted two 911 calls that Mr. Palm described as a bit frustrating.

“I’d consider calling 911 [and] saying someone had been attacked a little brash,” Mr. Palm said, noting the RCMP and an ambulance were also dispatched to the scene. “That obviously wasn’t the case. It was more a bear sighting than anything.”

Hikers were on the BCMC Trail near the Grind, which begins at 300 metres elevation and climbs to 1.1 kilometres elevation over a distance of 2.9 kilometres.

That’s when the bear came into the weekend mix. Mr. Palm said a few groups of people encountered the bear, including one woman who called 911 because she feared her husband had been attacked.

“If you picture a trail going up the mountain that zigzags back and forth, and then every little ways down the trail, there’s a different set of people coming up the trail and there happens to be a bear travelling down parallel or down the trail so each group of people has their own little, ‘Oh, there’s a bear,’ bit of an encounter. … One group of people shrieks and people who just saw the bear hear those people shriek and draw conclusions from that.”

Black bears are a fixture of the North Vancouver area, drawn to some backyards by garbage. The bear involved in Saturday’s incident has been seen previously in the area, and there are no plans to track it down. Mr. Palm acknowledged black bears can “absolutely” be dangerous, pointing to a fatal attack on a woman in the southeastern B.C. community of Invermere last month.

“[Attacks do] happen from time to time, but there’s a way higher likelihood of being involved in a car accident or something or being hit in a crosswalk as you’re walking across the street, than being [attacked] by a bear.”

Tony Webb, chairperson for a North Vancouver volunteer group that supports the co-existence of black bears and people and tries to inform the public about coping with bears, said Saturday’s incident shows how the public often misreads bears.

“People, if they understand bears, will be able to co-exist with them,” said Mr. Webb, a member of the North Shore Black Bear Network.

Mr. Webb said that there are a “minority” of dangerous, predatory bears, but that bears are statistically less dangerous to people on the Grouse Grind than is the drive to the area.