Date/Time
Date(s) - Mon Jan 20 2025
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Notes:
Aversive conditioning is a grizzly bear management tool which has been employed in the Parks and Protected areas of Kananaskis Country, Alberta, Canada for over 20 years. The aversive conditioning program involves applying different conditioning stimuli to grizzly bears in an effort to change their behaviour and maintain public safety. We will discuss the context, evolution and operational requirements of the program. We reviewed and summarized over 10,000 grizzly bear aversive conditioning records collect between 2000 and 2023. Most of the over 50 grizzly bears involved in the program were habituated female grizzly bears that demonstrated a strong fidelity to the facility zone, an area of high human visitation and recreational infrastructure. Juvenile and young bears, typically required more aversive conditioning actions, while conditioning frequency diminished with age. None of the bears involved in the aversive conditioning program were involved in a serious human wildlife conflict causing human injury or death. The aversive conditioning program has also reduced the need for local facility closures and management removals of bears. Survival and reproductive success of bears involved in the aversive conditioning program were relatively high, which may contribute to a locally stable grizzly bear population. Bears that left the operational area of the aversive conditioning program, specifically protected ares, were often subject to a higher frequency of management actions and removals. We will also discuss the efficacy of different noise, projectile and contact projectile stimuli as well as the use of Karelian Bear dogs. The Kananaskis Country aversive conditioning program is a model of how management actions can achieve both public safety and conservation objectives in a high recreational use landscape specifically parks and protected areas.
About John Paczkowski:
John Paczkowski is a biologist who has over 30 years experience in working with large carnivores, mostly bears. In a previous life, he worked on brown bears and Amur tigers in the Russian Far-East, but for most of his career he has worked in Alberta and British Columbia. Currently, he is employed by the Government of Alberta as the Human Wildlife Coexistence Team Lead for the Kananaskis Region, based out of Canmore. The program in Kananaskis Country is greatly augmented by a team of about 40 volunteers and students, who contribute about 8,000 hours annually to research and monitoring projects in the region. John is very open to collaborating with other biologists and students and has some amazing long-term wildlife camera and grizzly bear GPS data sets to share.