April has been deemed “Bear Awareness Month” and there have been several sightings on the Kenai Peninsula already.
Area Biologist Jeff Selinger with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game gave some tips on what to do in order to keep bears away from residences.
Selinger: “Yeah there is a lot of different things that people can do, they can start by just going out and looking around the yard or in the neighborhoods or the wood lots around their house because there could be things that accumulated over the winter, there could even be carcasses from animals that died during the winter we’ve had moose starvations occur even this year, being a relatively mild winter we’ve seen cases of moose starvation. Just check around, be careful while you’re doing it, clean up anything that might attract bears into your neighborhood, mainly garbage issues or items that have a lot of odor to them.”
He also suggested what to do if a bear is in a residential area.
Selinger: “The first thing to do is to make sure everybody’s safe, get everybody into a safe area inside the house preferably, you can try to do it in a safe manor by making noises, you know going outside and trying to move the animal out of the area, only do that if you can do it in a safe manor I need to emphasize that. But then you should also contact the Department of Fish & Game and we will make a site visit to see if there’s anything that we can see that might have brought the animal to the area.”
This year the proclamation was signed by Governor Bill Walker on March 19.
