Bylaws and Ordinances
Bylaws and ordinances reflect a community’s overall principles and values and are meant to evolve as the community’s standards and norms shift. Community bylaws are governed by law and serve as educational tools that assist community members with understanding why a specific bylaw, such as a wildlife attractant bylaw, is required and what each community members role and responsibility is in relation to managing wildlife attractants.
Creating a wildlife attractant bylaw facilitates minimizing, to the greatest extent possible, the availability of human-generated foods and other substances that can often lead to the attraction of wildlife into human populated areas. These bylaws support communities with being porous to wildlife activity—allowing wildlife the ability to move through the landscape without the risk of them stopping, staying and potentially raising safety concerns for both humans and themselves.
Each community is unique, and the stage at which they pass bylaws will differ. Some communities may be resistant to passing bylaws that they feel limit personal actions, and it can be better to put more focus on education and voluntary compliance of Bear Smart practices in the beginning. Nevertheless, bylaws are a necessary element to any successful human-wildlife management plan as a way to prohibit the supply of unnatural foods to wildlife as a result of intent, neglect, or irresponsible management of wildlife attractants.
Currently, wildlife is being killed in direct relation to being fed, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Local governments play an important role in not only educating residents and visitors on how to manage wildlife attractants, but also to adopt bylaws that clearly address the management of these wildlife attractants. While the management of wildlife is a provincial or state responsibility, the regulation and management of wildlife attractants that bring wildlife into communities is the responsibility of local government.
Bylaws and ordinances should be tailored to address each community’s differing and particular needs. A stand-alone wildlife attractant bylaw can be adopted or alternatively, specific wildlife attractant management criteria can be inserted into an existing bylaw such as a solid waste bylaw.
Enforcement
Passing and enforcing bylaws is an important component of an effective regulatory system. It is also essential to help people understand what the rules are, why they exist, and how they can easily be complied with. A public education outreach program will assist with supporting residents and visitors to properly manage wildlife attractants and is key to a successful and long-term approach to mitigating negative human-wildlife interactions.
Enforcement staff efforts typically prioritize seeking voluntary bylaw compliance through educational efforts. It is preferable to have offenders correct their own behaviours voluntarily based on a better understanding of the bylaw and its purpose. Having a comprehensive and fair bylaw provides the necessary teeth should education not be sufficient to gain compliance.
Bylaws are nothing more than words on paper if not enforced. Importantly, local government elected officials, councils and boards can direct enforcement staff to prioritize specific bylaws and can also provide direction on the enforcement process (e.g., when to provide more tickets than warnings and vice versa). It is within a local government’s authority to place a higher priority on the enforcement of a wildlife attractant bylaw to reduce, and potentially eliminate, the needless and preventable human-caused loss of local wildlife and to reduce the potential for human injury, injury to pets/livestock, agricultural losses, or property damage.
Provincial and state regulations
Various provinces and states have existing regulations or laws that may compliment or enhance a community’s bylaws or ordinances.
In the Province of British Columbia, it is an offence to feed dangerous wildlife e.g., bears, cougars, coyotes, and wolves, or to disobey orders to remove and clean up food, food waste, or other substances that can attract dangerous wildlife. Refer to B.C.’s Wildlife Act Sections 33.1, 88.1, 84, 84.1 for more information.
In the State of New Jersey, 2013 New Jersey Revised Statutes, intentional feeding or otherwise attracting black bears is prohibited. Under Colorado state law (1992) it is illegal to feed big game animals e.g., bears, bighorn sheep, cougars, deer, elk, mountain goats and pronghorn Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
Learn more about writing attractant security bylaws in the Wildlife Attractant Bylaw Toolkit.