In Pic :Neil Hamer feeds a four-year-old bear named Wimpy in 2012. The Ontario Court of Appeal has just ruled against him, upholding a by-law passed to prohibit feeding bears.
Soon after the coming thaw, as she has done for years, a great black mother bear known as Belles will leave her den in the woods of northern Muskoka and saunter down to Neil Hamer’s general store, looking for her customary meal — expired marshmallows, stale bread, rancid milk, bacon fat, whatever Mr. Hamer happens to be throwing away.
This spring, however, a new ruling of Ontario’s highest court means she will be turned away hungry.
“She is so gentle when I feed her, oh man it just blows your mind away,” said Mr. Hamer, whose location on Lake Joseph Road puts his annual bear buffet right in Ontario’s priciest cottage country, where black bears are regarded as dangerous vermin, like giant killer raccoons.
She is so gentle when I feed her
Mr. Hamer has watched Belles’ litters come and go, Wimpy and Mutt and the others, and has an unorthodox view of these wild animals, even referring to them as his own, like “family.”
“I control my bears with, believe it or not, voice tone,” he said. “The tone of your voice actually gets their attention. They don’t understand English, but they do understand tone.”
He feeds them in spring, sees them leave in summer when the wild berries come in, and feeds them again in late August, before the nuts and acorns are ready in fall. He thinks the open offer of free food discourages bears from breaking into cottages.
In a new ruling that smacks down this practice on pain of a large fine, the Ontario Court of Appeal has just upheld the by-law the township passed to stop him, after Mr. Hamer convinced a lower court judge to quash it last year.
In essence, the Ontario Court of Appeal found what every camper already knows: Do not feed the bears.
It issued a permanent injunction forbidding Mr. Hamer from “deliberately feeding any bear or providing access to food to any bear or placing or storing any “attractants,” as defined by the by-law, outdoors for the purpose of attracting or feeding any bear.”
We definitely think the township will be safer
“We definitely think the township will be safer,” now that the by-law is upheld, said Seguin Township Mayor David Conn.
The Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ontario Provincial Police, and Mr. Conn himself went to see Mr. Hamer, urging him to stop, arguing that feeding bears habituates them to humans, and interaction with wild bears should be avoided because it endangers both bears and people.
“He wasn’t particularly amenable to that point of view,” said Mr. Conn, who disputed Mr. Hamer’s theory that the feeding prevents the cottage break-ins.
“If he wasn’t feeding them, they wouldn’t be around the cottages to break into,” Mr. Conn said. “Bears are supposed to be in the bush.”
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