Mountain View BearSmart Society

Vision

Mountain View BearSmart Society (MVBS) is a pro-active, progressive organization that works within the community to minimize the potential conflict between humans, bears and other wildlife.

Mission

As a not-for-profit society, MVBS strives to promote bear and wildlife awareness through education, public information, and notification systems while remaining neutral on issues relating to bear and wildlife conservation, hunting and trapping. Education is the prime focus for MVBS as a means to reduce human- bear conflict and promote safety for both humans and wildlife. MVBS works in collaboration with residents, tourists, industry, and government agencies to achieve its goals.

As people move into what has historically been bear habitat along the eastern slopes of Alberta, combined with bears also moving from public lands eastward onto private lands, interactions between bears and people have become more widespread. In the interest of public safety and conservation, the Alberta BearSmart program was introduced by the Government of Alberta to reduce the number of negative interactions between bears and people. Alberta BearSmart is an important tool to help support communities and other stakeholder groups living, working and recreating in bear country. Failure to gain that support from the people most affected by bears can result in increased human-bear conflicts, increased human-caused bear mortality, and an overall lack of public support for bears in general.

MVBS is an integral part of the Alberta BearSmart program which seeks to reduce human-bear conflicts and increase public stewardship of bears in Alberta by providing strategic information and education materials to the public, stakeholders and government agency staff dealing with bears. Stakeholders include local residents, tourists, conservation groups, industry (including oil and gas developers), and agricultural producers. The program is intended to:

• Reduce the number of  human-bear conflicts, which may result in injury or death to both humans and bears
• Reduce the number of bear mortalities and translocations that occur as a result of negative interactions
• Reduce annual costs associated with property damage and management actions to address conflict situations.

Humans and bears can share the same landscape – we humans need to take responsibility for keeping ourselves safe and for preventing wild bears from becoming habituated bears.