Black bear activity closes Kejimkujik seaside park over Canada Day weekend

KejimkujikNational Park Seaside will close this weekend to protect visitors and the healthy population of black bears in the national park.

The park near Port Mouton, N.S., will be closed from Friday evening through Monday because of increased black bear activity.

Park officials will re-evaluate on Tuesday, as they wait for the bears to move from the shoreline, where they are finding food.

Chris McCarthy, a resource conservation manager for the park, said the berries the bears eat in the wooded portion of the park are ripening late this year, leaving them looking for food on the beaches near the trails during the height of visitor season.

"They're needing some supplement, so they go down to the beaches and basically dig through the wrack, the seaweed that washes up and they find maggots and all kinds of tasty bits to help tide them over until the berries and nuts are ripe enough for them to eat," said McCarthy.

Healthy bear population

In his 19 years with the park, he said he hasn't seen bears grazing on the beaches as late as the Canada Day weekend.

The safety measures will remain in place until the bears begin moving to the woods.

Park officials said the increased bear activity is not unusual and they're seeing a healthy population thanks to the largely undisturbed habitat and abundant food supply.

Visitors to the park on Friday should travel in groups of three or more, carry bear spray and noisemakers, not bring pets and not interact with bears, park guidelines suggest.

"By reducing the potential of bear-human encounters through the guidelines and closures, Parks Canada is encouraging natural black bear behaviour and reducing the likelihood of risky behaviour which can happen when bears become habituated to humans," the agency said in a statement announcing the weekend closure.

If visitors encounter a black bear, they are advised to face the bear, make noise, raise their arms to make themselves look bigger, back off slowly and report the incident to a parks officer.