Editor, The News:
Re: Bear killed in Maple Ridge Park (The News, June 15).
I was quite outraged about the young bear killed by conservation officers in Maple Ridge Park.
The officers made it very clear that the open garbage cans in Maple Ridge Park attracted the injured bear.
This seems crazy and antiquated to me that a park in Maple Ridge, near wildlife areas, is not equipped with bear-proof garbage cans.
This is 2011, and surely everyone, especially those municipal officials whose job it is to know these things, is aware that bears are attracted to garbage, and a ‘fed bear is a dead bear.’
Provincial parks and Metro Vancouver parks have bear-proof garbage cans. Surely a tiny portion of the hefty taxes I and many others pay as a Maple Ridge homeowner could go to installing a few of these bear-proof cans in Maple Ridge Park. I mean, isn’t that why we pay taxes, for the provision of services and improvement of our area?
And, while these municipal officials are at it, whey don’t they pass a Bear Aware bylaw in Maple Ridge, for goodness’ sake? They don’t even have to reinvent the wheel – they just need to copy it from all the other more progressive municipalities around B.C. that already have such a bylaw.
Y. Mitchell
Maple Ridge