With 6,000 grizzly bears and 10,000 black bears in the territory, it's not uncommon for Yukoners to see bears while out in the bush. In the vast majority of cases, people just catch quick glimpses of these animals. But very occasionally people are injured or hurt in encounters with bears, so bear safety is an important topic for Yukoners.

Unfortunately bear safety can be a difficult topic to teach because there are no easy all-purpose guidelines that are guaranteed to work in every encounter with a bear. Bears are intelligent creatures that can respond differently at different times. The more people know about the behaviour of bears, the safer they will be in bear country.

That's why bear biologists are now working on a video about bear safety that will put a strong emphasis on the biology and behaviour of bears. John Hechtel is one of five bear specialists working on the production, which is supported by the International Association for Bear Research and Management.

Hechtel, an Alaskan biologist now working on secondment with the Yukon Department of Renewable Resources, has taught bear safety on numerous occasions during the more than 20 years he has worked as a bear biologist. He points out that it is not possible to run controlled tests to see what strategies work best when humans encounter bears. Biologists have to base their advice on what they know about bear behaviour and analysis of the incidents that do happen.

"You have to look for patterns since you can't do tests. You look for evidence at a site (of a mauling) and talk to people. But there are some real problems there. Maulings are rare. It doesn't seem like it because of all of the media attention that they get, but they are. So you have the old oxymoron 'What's a typical rare event.'"

In some cases people will respond inappropriately to a bear encounter, but they will not be hurt. Other times people might be mauled even though it looks on the surface as though they have done everything right. This inconsistency does not make it easy for bear biologists trying to give information on what to do in a bear encounter.

Hechtel and other biologists hope that this video -- with its emphasis on bear behaviour -- will help with efforts to educate people about bear safety. He thinks that this approach is the key to bear safety.

"The important thing is not the species involved but the behaviour," he says. "For example, is it a food-conditioned bear or a defensive-aggressive one? We want to go into the principles of bear behaviour and really emphasize bear behaviour to explain why bears behave the way they do. And we want to use the best video footage that we can so that people can anticipate a range of encounters."

The video will show curious bears, defensive-aggressive bears and predatory bears, among others. The idea is to focus on how bears behave and what their body language means in different situations, and on how bears act among themselves to minimize conflict.

"When you can actually see behaviours and see what bears look like in different moods and couple that with an explanation, it's a good teaching tool," says Hechtel.

The plan is to put together a main teaching video on bear behaviour and then a series of modules targeted at specific audiences such as anglers and hunters. Hechtel says that usually the same principles apply in different situations.

"You don't want to attract bears to you. You don't want to put yourself in places where bears want to be. If you're a hiker you don't want to pitch your tent in a soapberry patch," he says.

Hechtel compares bear safety training to avalanche safety, but says that people seem more willing to take time to read and learn about avalanche safety than they do about bear safety.

"Some people seem to want just one piece of advice and unfortunately that does not always work. Playing dead seems to stick with them and that can be fine in some situations but it can also make a bad situation worse," he says.

"What we have seen over time is that in encounters with bears that are not acting defensively, people play dead when they should have been aggressive; or they play dead prematurely in situations where it would have been better to stand their ground until the last minute.

"These are subtle but important points. When the bear is 10-15 yards away, you do not want to fall to the ground and play dead, even with a defensive-aggressive bear," he says.

Hechtel is reluctant to critique real events because he says "you can't roll the tape back and tell people to react differently. You can't say that there would have been a different outcome." But he does say that a tragic encounter in Kluane National Park a few summers ago illustrates a case in which people based their behaviour on the species of bear rather than on how the bear was behaving.

In that incident a couple encountered a young male grizzly while walking on a trail. When the bear began to follow them, they retreated, and eventually threw off their packs to distract the bear. When the bear continued to follow them, they played dead. One hiker was killed and eaten by the bear. The other was injured but managed to escape.

Hechtel says that since the couple had not startled the young grizzly, when the bear began to follow them, they should have stood their ground instead of retreating. "It's a myth to think that black bears are predatory while grizzly bears are not. They are rarely predatory but they can be. If the Kluane bear had been a black bear, people probably would have understood the concept of a predatory bear," he says.

Hechtel says events such as this one are tragic enough without criticizing people for having taken the wrong course of action. He says that he prefers to explain what he would have done in a particular situation and why, with no guarantees that the outcome would have been different. He points out that even bear experts can disagree on their analysis of some encounters.

Hechtel and the other biologists hope that this bear safety video, which should be completed next year, will increase safety for both bears and humans. After watching it, people should have a better idea how to behave if they encounter a bear, and they will be less likely to shoot a bear when it's really not necessary.

For more information on bear safety, contact the Yukon Department of Renewable Resources at 667-5652.