Electric fences for protection against polar bears?

SEAN McKIBBON

IQALUIT — Nunavummiut will soon have a new tool to protect themselves against polar bear attacks.

The Nunavut government’s Department of Sustainable Development is almost ready to approve electric fences to keep polar bears away from outpost camps.

“We have to reduce the number of problem kills. It’s an effective tool to help do that,” said Andy McMullen, a wildlife officer for the department.

McMullen said tests of the technology that the Nunavut government performed in Churchill, Manitoba have proved successful.

“There’s been a number of incidents over the years and this year we had somebody who was killed by a polar bear,” said Stephen Atkinson, the director of wildlife and environmental protection for the sustainable development department.

Reducing the number of bear attacks is important, not only for safety reasons, but from a conservation and harvesting standpoint as well said McMullen.

“Every bear that’s killed in a defence kill has to come off a quota,” said McMullen. “If a female bear is killed it can mean a serious blow to a community’s economy, because it will reduce the number of tags a community gets the following year,” he said

While the technology has been used in the Kitikmeot to repel gri ly and black bears for more than 10 years using it on polar bears is new, he said.

“A lot of people said it wouldn’t work. Well, it does work,” said McMullen.

A number of years ago, an NWT wildlife officer tested electric cow fencing unsuccessfully on polar bears, and that initial test lead many people to believe electric fence wouldn’t work, said McMullen.

But what many people didn’t realize, said McMullen, is that cow fencing requires wet soil to provide grounding for the electrical charge to pass through the bear.

In the North, where the soil is very dry, cow fencing doesn’t work. But the fencing tested in Churchill is very different, he said.

The new fencing covers more area, requires no grounding, takes less power, can run from batteries, and can be left in place with very little maintenance.

“It’s not for the dead of winter when the snow would ground out the wires and drift over the fence, but that’s not generally when you get problems,” he said.

Instead, the fencing is to be used in the summer and fall when the bears are hungry.

Because of the cost, McMullen said the fencing is really only useful for outpost camps and semi-permanent research stations. A number of electric fences have been used in the Kitikmeot to protect mining exploration camps, he said.

A more portable three-wire system, possibly suitable for encircling a campsite, is also being tested, but that study hasn’t been completed yet, he said.

The new fencing consists of eight wires supported by fiberglass poles. The poles are planted three feet into the ground and supported by braces. The fence is 54 inches high with a bottom wire sitting two inches off the ground to discourage bears from trying crawl under.

The other wires are placed closely enough together so that a bear can’t help but touch more than one wire if it tries to test the fence, said McMullen. When that happens, the charge passes from one wire through the bear to a second wire, thus eliminating the need for a ground.

In almost every case in Churchill, the fencing worked.

McMullen said firearms, rubber bullets and other deterrents are still necessary and that people shouldn’t develop a false sense of security while using the new fences.

He also said that people still need to know how to properly store their food and dispose of their garbage and waste in a way that doesn’t attract bears.

“It’s just one tool in deterring,” bears McMullen cautioned. “It isn’t a cure-all. It’s not a tool to be used by every one in every situation.”