How Communities Learn to Share Their Home With Bears and Coyotes

On September 10, 2026, the weekly Bear Report for Canmore, Alberta warned that a young black bear was being seen regularly in the Cougar Creek, Eagle Terrace and Benchlands neighbourhoods, feeding on people’s cherry trees. 

The same report reminded residents of a rule that most towns would never think to write down. In Canmore, if a bear is found feeding on your fruit tree, the first offence can cost you $1,000. 

That rule says a lot about how a community changes when it lives next to wild animals. 

Canmore did not start out with bear-resistant bins, bird feeder rules and fines for fruit. The town and its neighbours built those habits over decades and the story of how they did it is the subject of Living With Wildlife, a documentary about human-wildlife coexistence that is now streaming on our platform.

Why wild animals come into town

The Bow Valley, which includes Canmore and Banff, is home to more than 25,000 people. According to WildSmart, it is also a major movement corridor for grizzly bears, black bears, cougars, wolves, elk and coyotes. 

When people and wildlife share that much space, they run into each other. WildSmart notes that most of those encounters are harmless, but some end with people injured, property damaged or animals relocated or killed. 

Nick de Ruyter, a program director with WildSmart, explained the logic behind the Bow Valley’s approach to the Rocky Mountain Outlook: “We can’t prevent bears from walking through town or through a backyard, but we can certainly prevent them from lingering by removing all attractants.” 

It started with garbage

Banff learned this lesson early. According to the Town of Banff, feeding bears and other kinds of interaction were frequently encouraged in the park’s early years, sometimes so that visitors could see the animals. 

In the spring of 1980, Parks Canada tightened its garbage rules. By February 1981, two Banff businesses were in court for failing to secure their trash. A CBC report from that time described a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet that, after a $350 fine, built a plywood enclosure around its bin and then left the door lying on the roof. 

The Bear-Proof Garbage

In 1983, Parks Canada asked Haul-All Equipment in Lethbridge for a garbage container that looked good and that bears could not get into. The tilted bins the company designed are now a familiar sight in provincial and national parks across Canada and in the United States. 

However, Haul-All calls its bins bear resistant rather than bear proof. Because a human error, such as someone not closing a bin properly, can still give a bear a way in. 

So the design is only half of the solution. In 2019, CBC reported that Banff did not offer door-to-door garbage collection at all, because backyard bins would attract bears. Residents carried their waste to community bins with latches that open when you slide your hand in palm up, squeeze and lift, which is a motion bears have not been able to figure out. 

Then came the fruit trees

Canmore went further. In 2017, town council unanimously approved a wildlife attractant bylaw that covered garbage storage, fruit and fruit trees, feeding wildlife and bird feeders. 

Under that bylaw, outdoor bird feeders were restricted between April 1 and November 30. 

The fruit trees were the harder problem. A 2018 survey found about 2,500 fruit trees across Canmore. In the same year, a Bow Valley human-wildlife coexistence task force released 28 recommendations to reduce encounters between people and bears, and it identified fruit trees as a significant attractant. 

In 2019, the town announced an incentive to cover half the cost of removing a fruit tree, up to $300. Today, Canmore runs Fruit Tree Removal and Replacement Incentive Programs that help residents swap fruit trees for trees that do not produce fruit. 

People are part of the system

Rules and bins only go so far, because new people keep arriving. Leanne Allison, who made Living With Wildlife, has described the challenge as “an endless need to educate new staff, visitors and new residents.” 

In the Bow Valley, much of that education comes from WildSmart, a program run by the Biosphere Institute of the Bow Valley.

WildSmart works with Alberta Forestry and Parks, the Towns of Canmore and Banff and the Municipal District of Bighorn. Its volunteers, called Wildlife Ambassadors, rove the trails of the Bow Valley and Kananaskis Country sharing wildlife safety information, and WildSmart has run that program with Alberta Parks since 2007. 

Some of the work happens one door at a time. In 2023, the Biosphere Institute and the Town of Canmore started a pilot project in which ambassadors went door to door, talking to residents about removing attractants such as fruit trees from their properties. 

If you would like to start smaller, WildSmart offers a free online course called How to Be WildSmart. It covers managing attractants at home and on the trails, avoiding and handling encounters and using bear spray.

What happens when one habit slips

Living with wildlife is not a problem that a community solves once. It is a set of habits that people have to keep up, and the cost of letting them slip can be high.

Vancouver is a good example. The Stanley Park Ecology Society has run its Co-Existing with Coyotes program since 2001, and the society describes it as the longest standing coyote coexistence program in North America. 

There were 45 reports of people being attacked or bitten by coyotes in Stanley Park. The provincial ministry announced plans to trap and euthanize up to 35 coyotes in the park, and the society pointed to people feeding the animals and leaving garbage behind as part of the problem. 

Many communities in British Columbia use a formal framework to keep those habits in place. The province’s Bear Smart Community Program asks a community to meet six criteria, including a hazard assessment, an ongoing education program and bylaws that fine residents for leaving attractants unsecured. 

How Living With Wildlife tells the Bow Valley story

Living With Wildlife is a 23-minute documentary from 2017, directed and produced by Leanne Allison. The film describes the Bow Valley as the busiest place in the world where people and grizzly bears still coexist, and it follows how Canmore, Banff and the communities around them came together over two decades to make that possible.

Many of the changes in this article appear in the film. You see the garbage bins designed to keep bears out, the bird feeder bylaw, food sources being removed from inside the town and fruit trees replaced with trees that only flower. The film also covers the wildlife corridors that let animals move through the valley, WildSmart training for kids and adults, and the wildlife crossing structures and highway fencing on the Trans-Canada Highway, which the film reports have reduced wildlife deaths from highway collisions by 80 percent.

The film closes with a list of what the region has achieved. It describes the Bow Valley as a world leader in bear-proof waste management systems and as the model for highway crossing structures around the world. It also credits the region with the first formal wildlife corridor guidelines in North America and the longest running aversive conditioning program in North America.

Allison explained what she hoped the film would do in an interview with the Rocky Mountain Outlook. “You just do certain things that you wouldn’t do in other places, like obeying closure signs and carrying bear spray, having your dog on a leash and when you do see wildlife, don’t get in their space,” she said. “Those are all just kind of cultural norms that you see here that are different from other places. With the film I really wanted to reinforce that culture of living with wildlife.” 

The film travelled well beyond the valley. In 2017 it screened at the Banff Mountain Film Festival, was featured on the National Geographic Short Film Showcase and was translated into Italian, Mandarin and Korean. 

If you live near wildlife

The Bow Valley’s approach comes down to a few habits that work almost anywhere.

1. Know what draws animals to your yard: Fruit, garbage, food, food waste, bird feeders and compost are some examples of wildlife attractants.
2. Check your local rules: Many towns near wildlife, including Canmore and Banff, have bylaws on attractants, and some of them come with real fines.
3. Do not feed wild animals: The Stanley Park coyotes show how quickly feeding can turn a manageable situation into a dangerous one.
4. Take a short course: If you live in or visit the Bow Valley, the How to Be WildSmart course is free and takes less than an hour. Or you can search for similar courses online.
5. Report what you see: Learn the telephone numbers you can call to report bears, cougars, wolves or any aggressive wildlife in your area.

Watch Living With Wildlife online

Living With Wildlife is streaming now on The Green Channel, the environmental documentary streaming platform. If you would like to see the highway crossings in more detail, Leanne Allison’s film Highway Wilding is also on our platform, and you can find more films like these in our Wildlife Documentaries collection.

Watch Living With Wildlife on our platform today.