OUR FRIEND BRENT PATTERSON AT TRENT U. DISCUSSING CO-EXISTANCE WITH WOLVES, COYOTES AND BEARS WITH COLLEAGUE MARTYN OBBARD OF MNR RESEARCH.................SO MUCH OF THE TROUBLES THAT WE ENCOUNTER WITH CARNIVORES IS EITHER THROUGH OUR LAZINESS WITH GARBAGE DISPOSAL AND/OR OUR INCLINATION TO PROVIDE SUPPLEMENTARY FOOD SOURCES FOR WILDLIFE----ALL LEAD TO POTENTIAL FATAL ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN MAN AND FELLOW BEASTS

Bears, wolves and deer explained by experts

Living in Haliburton County means sharing the area with a number of creatures, including predators such as bears and wolves.

Learning how to coexist with these animals was the subject of a seminar hosted by the Haliburton Highlands Stewardship Council at the Kinark Outdoor Centre on Oct. 15.
"The bears can't help themselves," said MNR research scientist Martyn Obbard, explaining that bears looking for food are under "tremendous evolutionary pressure" to follow their stomachs. Bears have a great variability in the types of food they consume and have memories that allow them to gravitate back to the same food source year after year. "If that food source happens to be improperly stored garbage outside your neighbour's cottage," that ability remains the same, Obbard said. In this area, bears' natural food sources include choke cherries and blueberries and as Obbard explained, it is common for these berries to be more plentiful, then less plentiful, in alternating seasons. "In even-numbered years, food sources in this area seem to be high," he said, explaining this meant that bear-human incidents were more likely to occur in odd-numbered years.
And stats back Obbard up.
This year, the Minden MNR office saw a large decrease in the number of bear complaint calls it received from last summer, when some bears had to be trapped and some killed in the Halls and Hawk lakes area. Also, Obbard said, bears generally have cubs every second year since cubs stay with their mothers for approximately 18 months. Bears have a physiological ability called delayed implantation where, while the eggs of a female bear have been fertilized, they do not attach themselves to the walls of the uterus until around hibernation time. If, at that time, her fat levels are not sufficient to sustain cubs, her body simply reabsorbs the eggs, terminating the pregnancy. The many females who did not have cubs in 1996 had them in 1997 and ever since, Obbard said, there have been far more cubs born in odd-numbered years than in even-numbered ones.
To avoid attracting bears to one's property, Obbard said, obeying the MNR's Bear Wise tips such as properly storing garbage and taking down bird feeders can help. For people who may have small orchards on their properties, Obbard said electrified fencing strung about waist-height (but low enough so bears can't squeeze under) can be an effective impediment.

EASTERN COYOTES, EASTERN WOLVES AND GRAY WOLVES:
Fellow research scientist and wolf expert Brent Patterson talked to the crowd about wolves and coyotes, saying that many of the animals people in this area refer to as wolves are actually eastern coyotes or hybrid animals. Eastern wolves are also present in the area. As Patterson explained, the eastern wolf, smaller and less pristine-looking than the grey wolf, has acted as a genetic conduit between grey wolves and coyotes. "It really muddies the water," he said. "If you take the eastern wolf out of the equation, you do not see any hybridization." (ONLY EASTERN WOLVES HYBRIDIZE WITH COYOTES CREATING THE EASTERN COYOTE-BLOGGER RICK
Grey wolves can only be found in more northern areas of the province due to substantial hunting in southern Ontario.
"If you try hard enough . . . you can eliminate wolves from the landscape," he said. "We've done it."  He said the fear of wolves much of the population seems to possess is actually irrational, perpetuated largely by centuries of folklore and fairy tales that paint wolves as evil creatures.
Patterson detailed how the size of a pack's territory is directly related to the availability of food and how packs mark their respective territories with scat and scent markers, as well as howling. Ministry staff commonly find healed bone fractures in wolf carcasses they test, Patterson said, which indicates just how hardy the species is. "Killing big animals to earn your livelihood is hard," Patterson said. The ministry is still trying to get an accurate measure of wolf density in the province, something he said is "difficult, expensive and time-consuming."
One thing people can do if they wish to reduce their chances of attracting wolves and coyotes to their properties is to refrain from feeding deer. "If you're concentrating deer at a feeder, you're in effect concentrating wolves and coyotes," he said. "Unless conditions are extremely dire, you shouldn't be doing it." This sentiment was echoed by Jan McDonnell, a natural heritage biologist with the MNR's Bracebridge office. "Deer feeding is a bit of a controversial subject," McDonnell said, reiterating that the practice concentrates an unnatural number of deer in a small area. Also, she said, it can interfere with the animals' normal metabolism and cause the spread of disease. Deer may begin to demonstrate risky behaviour – such as crossing highways or frozen water bodies they wouldn't normally traverse – to get to their new food sources. "When you kind of get involved in artificial feeding, things get all messed up," she said.
McDonnell said people needed to start doing a better job of coexisting with other species. "It's something that I think people aren't really good at yet," she said.