The "These are B.C.'s deadliest communities — for bears" story asks why Prince George leads in the number of bear killings in spite of policies minimizing bear attractants.
I don't know whether our policies and practices are as good as they could be, but the statistics cited are nearly useless. The frequency of problems with bears is surely dependent on the density of the bear population as well as factors such as the area of the city and the density of urbanization. It seems likely that we lead in bear deaths because we have lots of bears and the city occupies a large area with extensive sparsely occupied areas.
Vancouver, though large in area, probably has few bear deaths because there are few resident bears and it is densely occupied and therefore provides poor habitat for bears. We need more sophisticated statistics than raw numbers of bear deaths.
Bill Poser
Prince George
