It turns out ‘hazing’ black bears is just part of the job for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
A video circulating online shows an RCMP officer in his full red serge uniform running alongside a bear in Waterton Lakes National Park.
Damian Gills, who shot the video earlier this month, posted it on YouTube with the title “Truly Canadian: RCMP in red serge chasing a black bear.”
Dennis Madsen, a Parks Canada conservation manager, says that the officer involved was actually just one of several people “hazing” the young black bear.
Hazing refers to a group of people making noise and running near a bear so that it takes off, according to Madsen. When needed, parks staff will even shoot chalk balls near a bear to try and frighten it away, he said.
According to Madsen, it’s common for bears to wander into Waterton, Alta., a town in the large Waterton Lakes National Park on Alberta’s border with Montana.
In this case, the bear was already downtown before parks staff got the call, so they enlisted the help of Sgt. Clayton Wilbern, who happened to be nearby, in his red serge, posing for photos with tourists.
Madsen says this particular bear is young and probably without a territory.
“He or she … might have been trying to avoid predation from larger bears who would think of him as food,” Madsen said. “Or (he or she) might have been trying to avoid the territory of another bear or a cougar,” he added.
Either way, he said, “parks staff are trying to teach it that it can’t come into town.”
With files from Angela Mulholland
