Its been a busy spring for calls about bears, says veteran conservation officer Ken Knutson.

It may not be the busiest he’s ever seen, but it’s been busy, up to three or four calls a day busy, he explained in an interview Wednesday afternoon.

Knutson said some calls are simply to report bear sightings, while others report concerns or problem bears.

Park officers spent the long weekend keeping an eye on the Wolf Creek Campground to ensure campers were properly storing food and such, as a black bear sow and her cub were frequenting the area.

A pair of black bears has been seen in the Mary Lake area, though it’s not clear if they are siblings or mates.

A call Wednesday, for instance, was about a black bear on the Annie Lake Road that was on an old bison hide, though it was gone by the time Knutson got there.

“I goes to show you: you can’t leave anything in your yard that bears might be attracted to,” he told the Star.

Conservation officers have set out a bear trap in the New Constabulary subdivision of Marsh Lake because a black bear has been up on the decks of area homes, Knutson said. The first complaint was around how the bear got into a bunch of bird seed.

Knutson emphasized how the use of proper fencing such as electrical fencing to protect livestock, is also an important step to ensure bears don’t pay the price for simply being out and about looking for food.

With the dry spring, vegetation has been slower to green up, so bears are having to wander further afield to forage, he suggested.

Bears, said the conservation officer, tend to wander at this time of year in any case because it’s mating season.

Knutson said household attractants not properly managed or livestock not properly protected can attract bears that could become dead bears.

Two more bears were shot over the Victoria Day weekend after bothering livestock.

A conservation officer shot a black bear last Friday after it killed a goat in the Hidden Valley subdivision. A resident of Mount Lorne shot a black bear on Monday after it raided the property’s chicken coop.

Neither of the properties were fitted with electric fencing, Environment Yukon pointed out in a release Wednesday.

Knutson said electric fencing has proved to be an effective deterrent for bears.

There have been six bears killed this spring because they’d become a concern to public safety or a nuisance for whatever reason

One of them, shot by an RCMP officer in Beaver Creek, was a grizzly bear which initially got into the community dump because the electric fencing wasn’t working.

It was later shot outside a home where bones had been thrown out.