Photo: Unsplash

Peachlanders have more problems with bears than other Central Okanagan residents.

In a presentation to council on Tuesday, Breanna Scott, WildSafeBC’s Central Okanagan co-ordinator, said the majority of calls to the local conservation office from Peachland was to report problems with bears.

In the rest of the Central Okanagan, deer are the No. 1 animal reported to conservation officers.

Between January and October, 75 calls were made from Peachland — 46 calls were “about black bears accessing garbage and fruit trees and breaking up a shed,” Scott said. Twenty-six calls were to complain about deer, two reported something to do with coyotes and one was about a rattlesnake.

In the rest of the region, 1,721 calls were logged. Half of them concerned deer, 37 per cent bears and the rest cougars, coyotes and rattlesnakes.

A big reason bears are such a problem is people put their garbage bins out too early. Bins are only supposed to be put at the curb at 7 a.m. on garbage pickup day.

Two thousand bins were tagged in the Central Okanagan for being put to the curb too early, 215 of them in Peachland, said Scott.

“The effectiveness of the bin tagging was around 74 per cent” in Peachland. On two Peachland routes, 24 and 27 per cent of homeowners were repeat offenders, she said, “which is better than the rest of the Central Okanagan where 39 per cent of residents would repeat.”

Photo: WildSafeBC