Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Paulatuuq (Oct 01/01) - Several grizzlies rummaging around town are making residents here wary about walking the streets at night.

Bears are common at this time of year as they forage for food before hibernation, but this fall, there seems to be a lot more bears coming right into town, says Bill Steven Ruben, the resource person at the Hunters and Trappers Committee. Just about every night now, bears come in to help themselves to garbage and people's drying meat and fish.

People do their best to chase the bears out of town with quads or trucks, but with night falling earlier, and no snow on the ground yet, it's hard to see well enough to chase them any distance, Ruben says. So the bears keep coming back.

All the activity is keeping people inside. "You take rides on the quad more instead of walking from house to house," Ruben says. "Fewer people are making their way around on feet." He says there appear to be several different bears coming into town although he can't be sure how many there are in total.

Shelley Illasiak, 14, says she isn't walking around at night any more because she's scared of the bears. "Our next door neighbour shot about three times at a bear -- it was like, maybe a few feet away from his house. Just about every night the dogs bark. You have to phone around for a ride or maybe sleep over at your friend's, wherever you're at."

Resident Andy Kudlak says he sees the bears at least every couple of days. "Other years it was one or two, but this year it's different. There was about four the other day in town -- a mother and three cubs. As soon as it gets night time, they walk around town." Like other parents, Kudlak is keeping his 12-year-old daughter inside at dusk, when the bears are most often around.

The bears are drawn to garbage, drying meat and fish, and dead seals left in the harbour, says Doug Villeneuve, a renewable resources officer for Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development in Inuvik. People with dog teams leave seal carcasses in the water to preserve them because the strong-smelling seal meat is not allowed in the community freezer.

The HTC is putting up posters and asking people to call the RCMP to report the bear sightings, so police can use rubber bullets and crackers to try to scare the bears off.

If the bears become more of a problem or keep coming in town despite the use of the bear-scaring equipment, the RCMP or HTC may decide to kill the bears. Killing bears is a last resort because it would mean the community would lose some of its quota bear hunting tags.

Left to their own devices, the bears will probably start to leave the community alone by mid-to-late-October when they go into hibernation.