By: Chantale Reitenbach and Tanya Borthwick
Do you have operations in bear country? If so, it’s critical to empower yourself and your employees with the tools on how to stay safe.
Adequate preparation is key when it comes to minimizing bear encounters. These preparations must begin before any workers are on site, starting with an initial task-based risk assessment for all phases of the project, resulting in a site-specific bear management plan.
Your plan should include:
• estimating bear populations
• identifying the season
• assessing the terrain
• identifying what prevention resources are available
• defining the scope of work
• identifying your risk tolerances.
These should all be documented in the project’s bear management plan, which is intended to be a bridging document describing how the company’s corporate policies will be applied for each individual project. It is not a one-size-fits-all document because it should be adapted for each area/project.
The Canadian Association of Geophysical Contractors (CAGC) released the CAGC Bear Hazard Response Guideline last year. Below is a summary of the guideline and how you can make your sites more “bear aware”.
When defining the scope of work, you need to evaluate the who, what, where, and when of your operations including:
• Working Alone: At your site how much solitary work is permitted before a worker is deemed to be working alone, what protections will be used, are there radio dead zones, and what are appropriate check-in intervals?
• Close Proximity: How close is “close proximity?” This distance can change as weather or topographical conditions can make a voice harder to hear.
• Immediate Peril: At what point in an encounter with a bear is a worker considered to be in immediate peril? This definition is key because only government agencies such as provincial fish and wildlife have the authority to permit a bear to be killed. The lone exception is in circumstances where a worker is in immediate peril from an attacking bear.
• Adequate Egress: Each site should define and achieve its own egress route determined by the features and topography of the site.
• Adequate Response Time: Based on where the site is located, what is considered an adequate response time?
The Bear Risk Matrix is a tool that can be used to assign a level of risk based on an observed encounter. The standard approach is to view the risk as a combination of both the likelihood and severity.
The severity or likelihood is assessed as the worst of three variables: How close are the bears coming to human activity? What food sources are attracting bears, natural food sources like fish, or unnatural sources like human garbage? How often are there sightings (occasional or frequent)?
Risk can be determined once the bear’s reaction or level of aggressiveness towards humans has been evaluated. If the bear ignores the approach of humans while it rummages for garbage, it is considered to be at aggression level 2 as it has not yet stood its ground or launched bluff charges. The bear is considered an “Indifferent or Habituated” bear.
Use the Bear Risk Matrix to determine the risk level of the bear encounter Low (Group 2), Medium (Group 3), Significant (Group 4), High (Group 5), Extreme – Non-lethal force (Group 6), or Extreme – Lethal force (Group 7). Once you’ve determined the risk level you can use the Recommended Mitigation Activities to keep your staff and site safe.
Call the Emergency Reponses Planners at Black Gold if you need help doing a risk assessment and developing a bear strategy for your sites.
