A popular tourist site was temporarily closed last week after a family of grizzly bears broke in to the Yukon Wilderness Preserve.

Jake Paleczny, the preserve’s executive director, and said the incident occurred early last Thursday.

“It is unusual,” he told the Star Monday, adding, “I’m not sure it’s cause for alarm, though; there’s no pattern here.”

At around 8 a.m. that day, staff spotted four grizzly bears inside the preserve’s five-kilometre road.

Noting that the site itself does not open to the public until about 9:30 a.m., Paleczny said he is fortunate to have had a bit of time to notify visitors and those scheduled for tours.

The site reopened at around noon, but the bears returned shortly after, meaning the preserve was only reopened for about 10 minutes.

The second spotting led the staff to shut down the preserve for the entire day, but it reopened Friday for regular business hours.

“It was pretty much the same area the second time around,” said Paleczny, adding that what visitors see amounts to about half of the total area covered by the preserve.

It’s only the second time in its 14-year-history that a bear or family has accessed the site, a release on the break-in noted.

The last time something similar happened was about a decade ago, before a perimeter fence was built. Staff spotted one black bear before similarly shooing it off into a nearby forest.

“If this was a reoccurring problem, I would be more worried,” Paleczny added, noting that proper procedures were followed and thankfully everyone left uninjured.

The preserve staff alerted conservation officers, who arrived to help usher the bears into a nearby forest with vehicles and bear bangers. Additional electric fencing was set up at key access points.

Paleczny said his staff also moved some of the garbage bins around and changed how frequently they emptied them.

“I think it needs to be a proportional response,” he said, before laughing: “we’re not looking at anything Jurassic Park-style.”

Seeing them return a second time might have been “a little more worrisome because I guess they didn’t get the message,” he continued.

He suspects the electric fence may have been an effective deterrence from a third visit.

“You always hope the first encounter is going to be the only encounter,” Paleczny said, although he’s happy to have had a more brief visit the second time around.

And it doesn’t exactly come as a surprise either. He added that the preserve has been visited by birds, red foxes and the occasional lynx in the past.

The site is also home to 13 species of northern Canadian mammals, according to its website, and covers roughly 700 acres of land.

“These are not manufactured habitats,” he said, noting the preserve is home to wetland for moose and cliffs for mountain goats.

“Our habitats blend almost seamlessly into the surrounding landscape.”

Within the span of a day, a group of bears had been sighted on a road just off the North Klondike Highway about eight kilometres away. Paleczny suspected these were the same family.

He added there is no reason for panic nor to rejig the site’s policies in a dramatic way, since electric fences have been in place in some areas of the site for about five years now, to safeguard species like the thin-horn sheep.

Meanwhile, the release showed that staff estimated the bears climbed more than a dozen fences measuring about 2.4 metres (eight feet).

These fences are definitely a deterrent, Paleczny said, noting some can reach up to about 5.4 metres (18 feet).

“But the thing is, bears are good climbers,” he laughed.

The preserve is cautioning visitors and residents that bears may be in the area for the next couple of weeks, and to secure their food and any other attractants.