Brief by Allen Best
Wildlife – May 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine
A bear expert from Whistler, British Columbia, reports a perhaps surprising compatibility of bears and people there. The population reaches up to 120 bears in some years, owing to the resort’s three golf courses and its ski area, Whistler-Blackcomb, according to Michael Allen, a bear researcher.
During two months of spring, the bears get a nutritional boost with the easy pickings of easily digested grass, clover, dandelions and horsetail. In the surrounding mountains, logging of trees, wildfires, and the cutting of ski trails have together resulted in a high density of berries.
Writing in Pique, Allen says bears find a lot to like in Whistler: plenty of clover, dandelions and berries and few physical threats, except when they get brazen and try to walk into kitchens.
He also says that golf courses support mostly male bears, which are called boars, while females gravitated toward the ski area. Why this is, he does not say.
