{"id":95197,"date":"2026-07-24T17:15:53","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T20:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2026\/07\/24\/an-intimate-look-at-life-alongside-grizzly-bears\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T17:15:53","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T20:15:53","slug":"an-intimate-look-at-life-alongside-grizzly-bears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2026\/07\/24\/an-intimate-look-at-life-alongside-grizzly-bears\/","title":{"rendered":"An intimate look at life alongside grizzly bears"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>                                    At recess, Abby Burtnick watches her Grade 4 and 5 students play in the schoolyard that borders an aspen and spruce forest in the Village of Haines Junction, Yukon.    Known as Dakw\u00e4k\u00e4da by the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, meaning \u201chigh cache\u201d in Southern Tutchone, the valley is hemmed in by the glacier-capped mountains of neighbouring Kluane National Park and Reserve.    Burtnick\u2019s students \u201ccheck in,\u201d scanning the bush as they play. From an early age, kids in Haines Junction are taught to confirm there are no grizzly bears or black bears around. Growing up in one of the densest grizzly bear corridors in Yukon \u2014 with a range of 14 to 40 grizzly bears per 1,000 square kilometres \u2014 kids learn young about the \u201cthings you should do in bear country and the things you shouldn\u2019t do,\u201d Burtnick says.    Grizzly bears are deeply embedded in the identity of Haines Junction, where visitors are greeted by a bear on the town\u2019s welcome sign.    Most kids are unfazed when conservation officers call the school because there\u2019s a bear in the area. When the rules are respected, grizzlies \u201cdon\u2019t really cause issues,\u201d Burtnick says. \u201cThey just exist.\u201d    In 2024, not one but six grizzly bears were spotted along the five-kilometre trail of the school\u2019s annual cross-country race that loops through a forested ravine. Conservation officers and wildland firefighters fanned out along the race route to ensure that the bears stayed off the trail. Burtnick was at the start-line, holding back 200 students, when she overheard a radio call about a grizzly on the race trail, followed by an update of two grizzlies mating.    The school delayed the race for an hour to give the grizzlies space to breed and move on. It\u2019s the kind of thing that \u201conly happens in the movies,\u201d Burtnick says with a laugh. Or, in Haines Junction.    Students at St. Elias Community School in Haines Junction grow up learning how to safely share the landscape with grizzly bears. Soapberry plants have been removed from parts of the school grounds to reduce natural bear attractants.    Communities in B.C. and Alberta are reporting higher rates of human-grizzly interactions and conflict \u2014 due, in part, to climate change, shifting food availability and habitat loss, along with more people living and recreating on the landscape. There are reactions ranging from fear to outright intolerance from communities who aren\u2019t accustomed to sharing space with one of Canada\u2019s largest apex predator species. Recently, authorities confirmed that two male subadult grizzly bears had been illegally shot along a highway near Sundre, Alta.    Meanwhile, the Village of Haines Junction has quietly coexisted with grizzly bears for decades. For First Nations people, millennia.    Photographer Sonny Parker lives amid a high-concentration of grizzly bears in Haines Junction, Yukon. He spent more than a year taking photos of bears, sometimes hiking in for hours and using camera traps, to capture these massive mammals in their natural habitat.               Here, people are proud \u2014 and even protective, Burtnick says \u2014 of the grizzly bears who den in the mountains and wander down to gorge on plants and berries in the valley below.    Grizzly bears in Haines Junction aren\u2019t sold as a tourist commodity in the same way they are in other Canadian towns that overlap with bears \u2014 like Banff, Alta., or Churchill, Man. \u2014 and residents say they prefer it this way. They don\u2019t want the \u201cbear jams\u201d that crowd highways down south and can lead to grizzlies being killed by vehicle traffic, Burtnick says.    So how does this small mountain community in southwest Yukon make it work?    \u2018This is their land\u2019    When John Fingland meets a grizzly bear on a trail, he heeds advice from Elders. He speaks calmly to the bear, addressing him as \u201c\u00c4\u0301\u2019s\u00eda,\u201d the Southern Tutchone word for \u201cgrandfather.\u201d    \u201cBears are very spiritual to us. We treat them like human beings,\u201d Fingland, a member of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, says.    Fingland works as a guide and storyteller at the Da K\u0173 Cultural Centre, which showcases his First Nation\u2019s history and culture in Haines Junction. The village was established in 1942 with the construction of the Alaska Highway, which carves east and west through the valley. But the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, along with the Kluane First Nation and White River First Nation, hunted, fished and travelled through the region for millennia before that.    John Fingland, a member of Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, gives cultural tours to hundreds of visitors each season. \u201cWe recognize that this is their land. \u2026 Their right to exist here supersedes our right to exist here,\u201d he says, speaking of grizzly bears.    There\u2019s a kind of code of conduct that develops when you\u2019ve lived so closely with grizzlies for 10,000 years. Fingland doesn\u2019t speak badly or make jokes about bears. He even steps around piles of scat. Stepping over would be considered disrespectful \u2014 a show of dominance, he explains.    \u201cWe have a very strong belief that this is their land,\u201d Fingland says. But not everyone has the same relationship with bears \u2014 or even a relationship at all. Especially tourists. Every summer, upwards of 40,000 people flow through Haines Junction on their way to Kluane National Park \u2014 home to the majority of Canada\u2019s tallest mountains \u2014 to camp, paddle on Kluane Lake or hike to the Kaskawulsh Glacier.    Haines Junction is a town in southwest Yukon with fewer than 1000 people on the outskirts of the St. Elias Mountains. A popular tourist attraction, Kluane National Park and Reserve is adjacent to the town.    At the village welcome centre, visitors are directed to the local bakery to buy or rent cans of bear spray. Bear spray contains capsaicin, the chemical compound that gives chili peppers their burning heat, and is considered highly effective at deterring aggressive bear behaviour. A study of 83 incidents of bear spray use from 1985 to 2006 showed 98 per cent of people who carried bear spray in close-range incidents were uninjured. Outside the bakery, there\u2019s a sign with a QR code that links to online instructions for using bear spray. Inside, baristas whip up lattes, and offer essential tips to tourists: Do not spray into the wind.    Some residents carry it, too, even if they\u2019re just out for a stroll. Marguerite Richard, who\u2019s lived in Haines Junction since 1988, says she doesn\u2019t need to see bears to know that they\u2019re around. That\u2019s not to say she\u2019s \u201cbearanoid,\u201d she adds, but rather \u201csituationally aware.\u201d    There probably aren\u2019t many places where the local bakery sells cinnamon buns, cappuccinos and bear spray. In Haines Junction, it\u2019s all part of living alongside grizzlies.    While walking, or trail running, Richard doesn\u2019t wear ear buds. She stays alert. In town, Richard sometimes finds grizzly tracks or piles of scat. She\u2019ll even take a closer look to get a read on how recently the bear was around, and what it was feeding on.    \u201cCoexistence is like a recipe, but it isn\u2019t a teaspoon of this or that,\u201d Richard says. It\u2019s about risk assessment and modifying her own behaviours based on the season, or the bears she encounters.   Richard relies on reports from neighbours and a community-run Facebook page, where a typical photo post might include the caption, \u201cGrizzly out between the airport road and Pine Lake, don\u2019t use the trail!\u201d    The valley is a smorgasbord for bears. In early spring, grizzlies feed on green grass, dandelions and alpine sweetvetch, known aptly as \u201cbear root,\u201d along the highway. If they get the chance, they\u2019ll prey on moose, sheep or caribou calves, along with smaller mammals like ground squirrels. Berries ripen through the summer into early fall as grizzlies undergo a metabolic state called hyperphagia, an extreme desire to pack on the calories.    A grizzly bear walks with her cubs near Haines Junction, Yukon, where residents have spent generations learning how to safely share the landscape with one of North America\u2019s largest predators.    It\u2019s when bears are given a chance to habituate to anthropogenic food sources \u2014 including garbage, livestock, meat caches or domestic fruit bushes, that trouble comes knocking on people\u2019s doors in Haines Junction. \u201cThat\u2019s a really dangerous situation for everybody and that bear is going to die,\u201d Richard says, point-blank.    That\u2019s one law of living with grizzlies that everyone in Haines Junction seems to understand is non-negotiable: a fed bear is a dead bear.    Prevention better than the alternatives     Perhaps no one knows grizzly bears better in Haines Junction than the conservation officers tasked with managing them. Fortunately, according to Russel Oborne, a conservation officer with the Yukon government, responding to a case of food-conditioned grizzlies is a rare occurrence in Haines Junction.    For 26 years, Oborne has lived and worked in various Yukon communities. Nineteen of those years he\u2019s spent in Haines Junction. While every local community is unique in their cultural approach to living with wildlife, he says Haines Junction is one of the most tolerant of coexisting with grizzly bears.          Rub trees are common around Haines Junction. These trees act like chemical community bulletin boards for bears, allowing them to communicate.    \u201cPeople are very aware that they can\u2019t have standing garbage on their properties,\u201d Oborne says. \u201cThey really understand what you need to do to keep the community safe and keep the bears safe.\u201d    He points to cooperation between the Village of Haines Junction, Yukon government, First Nations governments and Parks Canada to prevent food habituation. They\u2019ve identified areas for potential risk, including a new bike park for youth, where they plan to uproot female soapberry plants \u2014 only the female plants produce fruit \u2014 this summer.    While agriculture and ranch lands can be \u201cecological traps\u201d for carnivores, Oborne says the number of farm-related conflicts in Haines Junction are very low. Nataschaa Chatterton lives adjacent to a grizzly bear hot spot along the Alaska Highway, and raises goats, horses and dairy cows, along with free-range chickens. \u201cWe\u2019ve never felt any threat,\u201d she says.    Occasionally, she\u2019ll find bear scat along the perimeter of the property. But she\u2019s never had a negative interaction with a grizzly bear. She credits her two land guardian dogs, Pyrenees mixes, for keeping the bears at bay. \u201cI know when there\u2019s a bear around because their bark has a different tone,\u201d she says. \u201cIt goes to a deeper tone \u2014 it\u2019s a bigger sound.\u201d    Nataschaa Chatterton lives on the outskirts of Haines Junction and raises chickens, goats, cows and horses. She has had almost no issues with bears over the years, giving a lot of credit to her dogs, Oda and Nya, who patrol the perimeter.              Licensed hunters can legally harvest one grizzly bear every three years in the Yukon, however females with cubs are off limits and roadside hunting is prohibited in some areas. In a recent government survey of 700 resident hunters, nearly half indicated that they\u2019d only harvest a grizzly bear in a conflict situation. The majority of hunters reported efforts to mitigate such a scenario with a grizzly, including that after a successful hunt, they\u2019d take the meat only and leave behind the gut-pile \u2014 the latter which is strong-smelling and a major bear attractant.    Yukon Conservation, along with Champagne and Aishihik First Nations and Kluane First Nation, have mobile electric fencing units that hunters can temporarily use while they process the meat, Oborne says.    \u201cPeople will hang a moose for about a week before they cut it up,\u201d he says. \u201cOf course, it\u2019s just this delicious-smelling dead moose to a grizzly bear.\u201d    Conservation officers sometimes use bear traps to relocate bears, often driven by public pressure.    There have been incidents in the past with grizzlies hanging around unfenced meat caches. Oborne advises people to process and get the meat into freezers, as quickly as possible, and remove bones and other attractants. \u201cUsually, that solves the problem,\u201d he says.    If it doesn\u2019t, Oborne adds, there are protocols in place to capture and relocate bears \u2014 if they haven\u2019t shown aggression towards people. Worst-case scenario, and an outcome that nobody wants, Oborne says, they euthanize. \u201cIt\u2019s a really hard cycle to break with the bears once they\u2019re into attractants.\u201d    Once bears are attracted to garbage, it\u2019s a really difficult habit to break. While conservation officers may attempt relocation, bears regularly come back.    While relocation is often perceived by the public as a \u201cgood news story,\u201d Oborne says, most conservation officers know that there\u2019s a high probability of the grizzly wandering back, especially if it\u2019s a male. Even if it\u2019s been moved 300 kilometres or more from the original location. Sometimes bears return in worse body condition, even more motivated to find food.    Relocation and euthanization are a last resort, Oborne says. He encourages residents to prevent food conditioning from occurring in the first place by keeping a clean property, or camp. \u201cThe proactive is way better than the reactive course of action,\u201d he says.    Practical steps Haines Junction has taken to support grizzly bear coexistence    A gang of glossy black ravens perch on a small mountain of garbage at the Haines Junction landfill.    Beyond the heaps of trash, you can make out a five-foot-tall fence \u2014 consisting of seven steel wires \u2014 running around the entire perimeter of the dump. A current of 10,000 volts runs through those wires: one touch to a curious bear\u2019s snout, and ZAP! It\u2019s an effective way to teach a bear you\u2019re not welcome here without harming it.    The Haines Junction waste management facility was the first of its kind to be electrified in the Yukon. Electrification has been one of the most effective tools in reducing human-bear conflicts near town.    In 1992, Haines Junction became the first Yukon community to electrify its garbage dump, Dan Drummond says. Drummond, a retired conservation officer who worked here from 1986 to 2007, says previously \u201call the dumps were open to all wildlife.\u201d Black bears frequented the dump during the summer, while grizzly bears \u2014 most often big males who wandered over from Kluane \u2014 tended to dominate in early to late fall. Locals and tourists also used to flock there to take photographs. The combination of attractants and attention led bears to become dangerously habituated to people.    \u201cHuman waste was available to bears at the bear\u2019s discretion,\u201d Drummond says. \u201cBears died at an unreasonable rate because of their proximity to people and people\u2019s garbage.\u201d    Drummond was a part of the village\u2019s effort to secure funding and install a trial 300-metre electric fence around the pit. It was part of a broader North America-wide movement from the late 1970s to early 1990s to improve bear management practices around garbage dumps in high-density wildlife areas.    The fence was immediately effective, Drummond says. One zap and the bears got the point.    Dan Drummond, a retired conservation officer, uses a wet blade of grass to test the current in the fence at the Haines Junction dump.    The community of Faro followed suit, then Whitehorse, he says. Today, all communities in the Yukon have electric fences installed around their landfills, or waste facilities.    Following the dump enclosure, however, many bears had to be put down. Mature bears who\u2019d spent their entire life gorging on garbage were conditioned to source it elsewhere. Some diverted to the neighbouring community of Champagne to raid meat caches and outdoor freezers, Drummond says. Dozens were shot.    Some residents remember the story of a grizzly, dubbed the \u201cburglar bear,\u201d smashing through a residential door at night, tempted by a Thanksgiving turkey carcass left in a garbage bag. The only barrier between the bear and the owner and her two young children was a plastic baby gate. Quietly, she and her children escaped through the bedroom window. Later, it was determined the same bear had broken into cabins along Dezadeash Lake, more than 40 kilometres away.    Bears are often seen on the outskirts of Haines Junction in early spring as they look for the first green plants along highway ditches.     Drummond shot the burglar bear from a helicopter, he says.    Once you \u201cbreak the cycle\u201d with those food-conditioned bears, \u201cyou\u2019re dealing with wild bears, and it\u2019s not so hard to keep them out of the dump.\u201d    Two years ago, the Haines Junction dump expanded into a regional waste facility. There\u2019s a recycling depot, which will soon be joined by a composter, all enclosed by an electric fence. The only wildlife spotted inside, an attendant says, are eagles and ravens.    They haven\u2019t had an issue with a bear in nearly a decade.    The laws of living with grizzlies     Ellen Bielawski has stopped counting how many grizzlies she\u2019s seen near her off-grid cabin, situated in a dense spruce forest west of Haines Junction toward the Alsek Valley.    But some encounters stand out, including the night she stepped outside to brush her teeth and looked up to see a mother grizzly and her two yearling cubs, less than 20 metres away. Shocked, everything Bielawski knew about bear encounters went flying out the window. \u201cDid I remember to face the bear? I ran into the cabin with my electric toothbrush,\u201d she laughs.    Ellen Bielawski and her partner live on the outskirts of Haines Junction. She points out where bears have dug for roots in front of her house.     The retired archeologist and professor has lived here for the past 20 years. She previously worked in the Arctic in polar bear country, where she slept in a tent with a loaded rifle by her side.    But here, grizzly bears tend to keep to themselves, Bielawski says.    \u201cPeople have always said to me, \u2018Aren\u2019t you afraid of bears?\u2019 And I say, \u2018I\u2019m way less afraid of bears than I am being a woman alone in a parkade in the city.\u2019 \u201d    Recently, she and her husband cut down and cleared trees and bushes within 30 metres around the cabin to make it less susceptible to wildfires. The catch-22 is an increase in grizzly susceptibility, as disturbed forest promotes the fresh growth of bear foods like grass and berries. But the upside is that it\u2019s now easier to see if a grizzly bear is around, Bielawski says, and they can avoid surprise encounters.    Doing FireSmart work involves clearing underbrush to prevent the spread of wildfires, but it also promotes the growth of plants and berries. As owners like Ellen Bielawski point out, it can improves line of sight for grizzly bears.    She\u2019s extra cautious in the spring when bears come out of the den, motivated to find food and mate, and fall, when bears are preparing to hibernate. \u201cI worry far more about November bears than I do the rest of the year,\u201d she says. In late November 2018, a woman and her baby were fatally attacked at their remote trapping cabin in east-central Yukon by an emaciated grizzly bear that hadn\u2019t yet denned. Authorities determined that the bear didn\u2019t have enough body fat to hibernate.    Bielawski avoids recreating at dawn or dusk, when grizzlies tend to be more active. Even walking out to the clothesline, less than ten metres away from her cabin, she carries an air-horn on one hip and bear spray on the other.    But the Alsek Valley is notoriously windy, with katabatic winds barreling through the valley at 100 kilometres an hour. It\u2019s not an ideal place to detonate a can of pepper spray.    She\u2019d like to see more workshops that allow participants the chance to fire an inert can of bear spray, and to understand how many seconds the contents of a can lasts for (roughly eight seconds). Adrenaline, Bielawski says, has the potential to take over in human-bear encounters. \u201cIt\u2019s flight or fight,\u201d she says.    In Haines Junction, it\u2019s not uncommon to see signs warning of bears in the area or see the bears themselves walking across the highway.          Although bear attacks are rare in Haines Junction, they have occurred in the past. On June 30, 2024, a resident was jogging with her dog along the Pine Lake trail which runs along the highway, east of town, when she came upon multiple grizzlies. There had been many sightings of family groups and courting pairs, grazing on grasses in the ditch, that spring, Oborne tells me. The dog broke free from its leash and triggered a defensive attack by one of the bears, who then turned on the jogger, according to a statement made by Yukon Conservation.    The jogger was critically mauled and required hospitalization, but survived \u2014 along with the dog. A recent study of human-bear conflicts found \u201cthe presence of a dog more than doubled the odds of a bear conflict.\u201d    Conservation officers put down three bears. Weeks later, the willows along the trail were cleared and mulched to improve visibility along the trail. Yukon Conservation, along with the village council, also put up a cautionary sign that reads: \u201cThis path is a high-use area for grizzly bears. Encounters are likely.\u201d It encourages people to carry bear spray and keep dogs leashed.    One source described the 2024 attack as a \u201clightning rod\u201d for conversation in the community, questioning why a recreational trail would be built through a well-known grizzly bear corridor \u2014 and why the jogger, a resident, chose to run late in the evening, without bear spray. Others expressed frustration that the bears were euthanized when it had been a defensive attack. Another indicated support for the conservation officers\u2019 call. Ultimately, everyone was relieved that the individual survived.    But no one raised the question of whether or not grizzlies belong.    Bear 141     As Burtnick drives to school, she scans the ditches for a small female grizzly bear that has been showing up in the community every spring since 2023. She\u2019s easy to identify due to a visible scar around her neck where a wire had been wrapped. The grizzly has become colloquially known to people as \u201cSnare Bear,\u201d Burtnick says.    To conservation officers, she\u2019s known as Bear 141, Oborne says. In 2023, he and his colleagues attempted to capture the small grizzly and remove the wire from her neck, but after a few days, she disappeared. He didn\u2019t think she\u2019d survive the winter.    Much to his surprise, Bear 141 returned in the spring of 2024, grazing comfortably beside the highway. Fortunately, the wire had fallen off. Although she hadn\u2019t displayed any aggression, or caused any issues, they decided to relocate her 200 kilometres northwest of town near the Donjek River \u2014 for her own safety, Oborne says.          Bear 141 has been a frequent sight in recent years on the edge of Haines Junction. Locals are proud to have her around and know that if they do their part, she\u2019ll hold up her end of the coexistence deal as well. Here she gently explores a camera trap with her powerful nose.    \u201cOf course, she came right back to Haines Junction.\u201d    But the small female kept to herself and didn\u2019t cause any trouble, so they let her stay. Last year, Burtnick and fellow teachers traded stories of their Bear 141 sightings, routinely spotted grazing in her habitual location along the same recreational trail where the attack occurred.    \u201cI actually think they\u2019ve got this attachment to her,\u201d Burtnick says, adding that residents feel protective of her when tourists idle in their vehicles, along the shoulder of the highway, taking photographs of the grizzly. \u201cThey want her to stay wild,\u201d Burtnick says.    As darkness settles over Haines Junction, people and grizzly bears continue to share the same landscape \u2014 a relationship built on prevention, respect and giving wildlife space.    By late June, no one had reported seeing Bear 141 yet this year. But if the small grizzly does amble back to her favourite spot along the recreational trail again, says Oborne, they\u2019ll leave her be.    \u201cShe\u2019s doing what a bear should do.\u201d                             <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At recess, Abby Burtnick watches her Grade 4 and 5 students play in the schoolyard that borders an aspen and spruce forest in the Village of Haines Junction, Yukon. Known as Dakw\u00e4k\u00e4da by the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, meaning \u201chigh cache\u201d in Southern Tutchone, the valley is hemmed in by the glacier-capped mountains of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":570,"featured_media":95198,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118,2338,1],"tags":[116,2337],"class_list":["post-95197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-indigenous","category-northwest-territories","category-uncategorized","tag-indigenous","tag-northwest-territories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/570"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}