Keep Your Cabin Safe with Electric Bear Fencing
“Electric Fencing for a cabin?” As the weather cools down, you’re likely not considering installing bear fencing. If you are a cottage owner, trapper, or outfitter with a cabin, however, it is strongly recommended you consider bear fencing to protect your assets. If you’re not careful, your cabin might receive a visit from an uninvited guest while you’re away. Bears search for food with their nose and your cabin is filled with attractants. Not only will they search for leftover food, they are also attracted to garbage, waste-water, household chemicals, motor-oil, almost anything with a smelly or pungent aroma. At this time of year, bears are packing in as many calories as possible, up to 20,000 per day in preparation for the winter. Bears are muscular critters and they can easily break through doors, windows, and even plywood cabin walls to get to that food source. And once a bear is rewarded with food, they’ll keep coming back to your cabin year after year. How to Prevent Damage with Bear Fencing Luckily, with a little prevention work, you can keep bears searching for wild food out of your cabin. Electric bear fencing is one of the best solutions to prevent cabin damage. You can install the fence directly on your cabin to protect the control area when you’re not around. Electric fences deliver a painful, but harmless shock that teaches bears to avoid your cabin. By targeting behavioural changes and creating a “landscape of fear”, bears will learn that your cabin as off limits. Follow these simple principles for your bear fencing: Think like a bear: You want a bear to contact the positive (charged) wire before it has a chance to cause any damage. Install wire anywhere you think a bear is likely to gain access – you’ll want to protect every window and door, and string at least one wire along the wall. Energizers: Electric fence energizers send short, safe, but strong electric pulses through the fence. If your cabin’s power supply will remain active choose and AC-powered charger. If not, a solar powered system will keep the fence active as long as you have sunlight reaching the panel. Our solar energizers use AGM frost-proof batteries are designed to remain active in cold temperatures. The fence energizer should be producing at least 7,000 volts along all points of the cabin wrap to be effective. Bear fencing sends a shock when the bear grazes the electric circuit, often done via the ground (earth) and a 6 inch ground rod driven into the soil. Grounding is one of the most important components in an electric fence, always use bonafide ground rods. If a section of the electrified wire passes over insulated ground material – like a wooden deck – you’ll need to place a negative wire connected directly to the negative about 6 to 8 inches away from the positive wire. Wire Selection: Most importantly, the wire needs to be tight to ensure bears receive a strong shock to their skin. Baygard Polywire is high-visibility and easy to work with for seasonal installations. Galvanized Steel Wire is an excellent choice for more permanent installations. Insulators: You’ll need to keep your electrified wire away from any other material, including your cabin. Electric fence insulators can be screwed right onto wood for easy installation. It might seem intimidating at first, but installing bear fencing is not difficult. With a little planning and execution, you can protect your cabin all year round. Visit our Fence Hub to learn all about fencing. Introducing Margo Fence Hub We want to share our expertise with you. Margo Fence Hub is your resource for anything related to electric fencing. From planning to installation, we have compiled various educational resources to help you create an effective electric fence system. Go to Fence Hub
Preventing Human-Bear Conflicts With Computer Modelling Technology
Press Release– Margo Supplies is proud to announce our involvement in a new computer modeling study over the next year. We will work alongside Dr. Lael Parrott of UBC – Okanagan to research the best methods for reducing human-bear conflicts in Whistler, BC in Canada. Dr. Parrott has received federal funding through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research (NSERC) Engage Grant to support the study. The grant is designed to facilitate partnerships between innovative Canadian companies and experts at Canadian universities and colleges. Human-bear conflicts occur when bears become habituated to human presence or are rewarded with non-natural food, including garbage. Habituated and food-conditioned bears pose a threat to property and human safety and are often euthanized. By using non-lethal deterrents and attractant management methods, we can prevent bears from becoming conflict bears, preventing damage to property and people, and conserving bear populations. Non-lethal methods include aversive conditioning using pyrotechnic noisemakers, also known as bear bangers, and electric fencing around known attractants. The Engage Grant will support the development of a computer agent-based model, which replicates the ecosystem of the Whistler Valley, and places simulated bears within it. This theoretical model will be used to test different deterrent and attractant management strategies and predict their effectiveness. The model will be able to predict what changes in bear behaviour are likely to occur in different deterrent and attractant management scenarios. By including both costs of deterrent strategies as well as responding to problem bears, this model will become a tool municipalities can use to help determine the best solutions and the most efficient way to allocate funds and reduce the number of conflict bears as a result of human activity. “I think most people enjoy sharing the landscape with bears,” says Jeff Marley, president and founder of Margo Supplies. “Our goal is to develop a model that any municipality can use to help inform their bear programming, ultimately creating a better way for us to co-exist with bears.” “Human-bear conflict is a wicked problem with many facets, both ecological and social,” says Dr. Lael Parrott. “By developing a new way to analyze how bears respond to human development across an entire landscape, we hope to help inform bear management, conserving bears while protecting people and property.” For further information, please contact: Jared Marley Director of Communications Margo Supplies Ltd. Tel.: 403-652-1932 E-mail: jared@margosupplies.com Dr. Lael Parrott is a Professor of Earth and Environmental Science and Biology at the University of British Columbia – Okanagan Campus. She develops computational models of complex ecosystems, which inform environmental management decisions in the real world. Parrott’s research is focused on creating ways to improve our quality of life while reducing our environmental impact. Learn more about the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Engage grant. Agent-Based Modeling simulates individual actors and their interactions with the ecosystem through computer modeling. By simulating the actions of individual animals, Agent-Based Modeling can be used to test and predict the effect on animal behavior caused by changes in the ecosystem.
