Wild Berries Are Causing a Surge of Bear Attacks in Canada

Forget the picnic basket. Bears in Alberta just want the berries—buffaloberries, to be exact.

An abundance of the wild fruit is causing an uptick in bear attacks in Alberta, Canada this summer, with two occurring in the past week outside Calgary.

The plant's exceptional yield this summer, combined with its tendency to grow in sparse forest areas (read: often near hiking trails), means visitors to Alberta's wilderness have been getting up close and personal with the province's ursine population as the creatures forage for food.

John Paczkowski, a conservation officer and biologist who works in the Bow Valley region, is actually tracking a grizzly bear via radio collar when he answers the phone for an interview. He tells MUNCHIES that bears depend on buffaloberries to put on weight for the winter.

This year's crop, which he says is one of the largest he's ever seen, is giving them a plentiful supply of food to gorge on, but is bringing them into close contact with humans visiting the area. The animals can be startled and act defensively if surprised.

"Because of the high density of berries in certain areas, we're seeing a higher density of bears coming in to feed on those berries. The main confounding factor in all of this is that there is an unprecedented number of people on the landscape," he says.

Prior to this summer, the region that Paczkowski monitors had gone through a two-year berry crop failure, a "berry drought" as the CBC referred to it. This kind of event, he says, usually occurs when an early flowering of the buffaloberry plant is destroyed by a cold snap in the spring.

Unlike coastal regions on the Pacific where bears depend on fish—particularly salmon—as a large part of their diet, buffaloberries, Paczkowski explains, are the predominant food source for bears in the region he monitors.

Indisputably popular among bears due to its high sugar and calorie content, the fruit is not commonly used in human cuisine, owing to its intensely bitter flavor. Nonetheless, it can be prepared in jellies, jams, and pies—if you add a healthy dose of sugar.

Sometimes called soapberry, the fruit also has a curious ability to froth up into a foam when agitated or whipped. Aboriginal people of the region use it in a dish known as sxusem, or "Indian ice cream," by combining it with other (often sweeter) varieties of berries or cane sugar to create a mousse-like dessert.

That actually sounds pretty delicious, but are fresh-picked berries really worth the danger? It took a bear attack to get Leonardo DiCaprio an Oscar, just remember that.