Conservation officers are urging Whitehorse residents to pick their berries after seeing an uptick in foraging bears rambling through the city’s neighbourhoods.

“I’ve never seen it like this week,” deputy conservation officer Jim Welsh told the Star Tuesday afternoon.

“The bears are really focused on going house to house.”

Conservation officers have spent the last week dealing with reports of bears from residents in Takhini, Whistle Bend, Riverdale and Porter Creek.

Welsh speculated bears are coming down into the Whitehorse area more because the berry season in the mountains is a bit late due to dry weather.

This means the bears that conservation officers are seeing in town aren’t the typical food-conditioned garbage-eating bears, but rather normal wild bears looking for normal bear food.

When people see bears near their home, Welsh urged residents to call the conservation officers immediately.

He also reminded people to put garbage out on the morning of collection and not the night before.

This helps keep bears away from people and eating natural food so they don’t become one of those garbage-eating problem bears.

Once a bear becomes a nuisance, it is hard to change the behaviour, which may ultimately lead to conservation officers shooting the bear.

“If we can get a bear early enough, we commonly can keep it from becoming habituated,” Welsh said. “And keep it alive.”

A habituated bear has lost its fear of people, while a food-conditioned bear has become focused on returning to a certain place to get human food.

Welsh’s goal is to make sure people keep their garbage and other food sources inside so bears don’t associate houses with food, but also to make sure the bears have a healthy fear of people.

“We’ll commonly put some pressure on them – we’ll use our trucks, our sirens, sometimes paintball guns,” Welsh said. “Any non-lethal means to make them uncomfortable in an urban habitat.”

If conservation officers are effective at this, then the bears simply go away and stay away. This means they don’t have to be dealt with by lethal means.

Welsh stresses that he wants people to call the conservation officers as soon as they see a bear in town, because the earlier they get to them to start this process, the more of a chance of success they are likely to have.

He also doesn’t want people to think that if they call conservation officers that a bear will necessarily be killed.

“We’re working really hard to haze bears out of the area, to trap them if required and relocate them; our last-case scenario is wanting to harm any animal,” he said.

When a bear becomes a repeat offender, the conservation officers sometimes are forced to put the animal down.

According to statistics provided to the Star by the Yukon government on July 20, officers had euthanized 16 black bears and 5 grizzlies so far this season. In all of last year they put down 33 bears.

Conservation officers are on call at all hours of the day and night, should they be needed to respond to any dangerous wildlife.

Despite the unusual berry season causing more bears to come into Whitehorse this week, Welsh says the season so far is pretty average.

Lately, conservation officers are responding to up to six calls per day.

Many of them are pretty simple situations, like the bear they were able to follow through Riverdale the other day.

They kept that bear moving, so it went from one end of the neighbourhood and right out the other side back into the woods.

Most of the bear issues in Whitehorse are with black bears. There are grizzlies in the area, but generally they stay around the edge of town, Welsh said.

“In the Yukon we could see any bear, any time,” he added, however.

If people see a bear in their yard, Welsh said to get to a safe place if possible, and to make noise. He suggests a car horn, or banging pots and pans together.

He encouraged people to make sure they have a can of bear spray handy should a bear venture into their yard or should they encounter one on a trail.

“Bear spray is certainly the best deterrent we have,” he said.

Statistics show firearms are only about 50 per cent effective in a dangerous bear encounter, while bear spray has been shown to be 95 per cent effective, Welsh said.

The conservation officer service has bear safety videos on YouTube, including instructional videos on how to use bear spray.

The videos can be found at the Department of Environment YouTube page under the Yukon Backcountry Toolkit section.

Welsh said it’s fine to warn neighbours on social media as well, but to call the conservation officers first.

If people simply post about bears instead of making the call, then officers can’t act to keep the bears out of urban areas.

Any bears lurking around homes or neighbourhoods and any bears being aggressive or trying to get food from people warrant a call, he said.

Conservation officers can be reached at 1-800-661-0525 24 hours per day.