Bruce Peninsula park closes campground after bear becomes habituated to human food

A persistent black bear's quest for human food has forced the closure of a popular campground in Ontario's Bruce Peninsula National Park for the rest of the season.

Park staff extended the closure of Cyprus Lake Campground to Oct. 31 after repeated efforts to deter a 300-pound male bear failed. The bear had grown bold, pulling down car windows, prying open truck hardtops and overturning bear-resistant bins to access food and garbage.

"We want to give the best possible chance of a good outcome for the bear," said Camille Girard-Ruel, the park's superintendent.

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Encounters between humans and bears have been steadily rising in Canada over the last 10 years, according to national Parks Canada data. In 2024, the most recent year available, Parks Canada staff managed 423 "co-existence incidents" involving black bears and "unnatural attractants," more than twice as many as in 2010.

At Cyprus Lake this summer, staff repeatedly reminded campers to clean their sites, store all scented items like toothpaste in vehicles and banned cooking after dark. They policed sites and confiscated carelessly left condiments and leftovers.

Twice, they trapped and transported the same bear deeper into the park. Each time, he returned, able to smell grease on a grill from kilometres away.

Camper Trinity Nicholson encountered the bear in late July while sitting by a fire with her father and friends. "I froze," said Ms. Nicholson, a 30-year-old nurse from Burlington, Ont. "I was staring at it, and it was staring back at me, and for a couple of seconds I was in shock, because I had no idea what to do."

She and her group scrambled into their locked car as the bear sniffed around their campsite. The experienced campers had cleaned up their steak dinner and stowed their food and garbage in the trunk.

"As scary as it was in the moment, he didn't seem interested in us at all," Ms. Nicholson said.

Now, staff are trying to re-instill the bear's fear of humans through hazing techniques, yelling, clanging pots and shooting bean bags at "the individual," as they call it. Martyn Obbard, a research scientist emeritus with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry and an expert on the peninsula's black bears, applauds the effort but says it rarely works.

"Sadly, these hazing efforts rarely work," said Dr. Obbard. "I certainly applaud the efforts to save the bear."

He said the inevitable end is too often a dead bear, citing recent examples in Wyoming and Yellowstone national parks where habituated bears were euthanized. "We need to be clear," the Wyoming park said in a Facebook post, "this bear was lethally removed because of poor decisions made by park visitors."

Dr. Obbard said people underestimate bear intelligence. "When we give them easy access to high energy food and garbage, or even raiding coolers, they're going to exploit that. And they're damn good at it."

He recalled a bear in Algonquin Provincial Park that learned to open outdoor refrigerators on cottage porches and eventually smashed through a kitchen window to get to one.

The Cyprus Lake bear may return next year, Dr. Obbard said, as hibernation does not erase a bear's memory. A whiff of burgers on the grill could have it haunting the campground again.

He suggests such encounters raise a philosophical question about human responsibility to a single bear after trespassing into its territory. He said he would agree with doing everything possible, but that may not be enough.

The only sure solution is prevention, he said, through decades-old best practices: finish cooking before dark, seal away all scented items, avoid sleeping in cooking clothes and never feed wildlife. He once found a forgotten, unused tea bag in his backpack that attracted a bear while backcountry camping.

Superintendent Girard-Ruel said the park borders residences and tourist attractions that also need to follow bear-safe practices.

With files from The Globe and Mail