A black bear was struck and killed on the railway tracks near the west end of town, about a mile from the Stone Mountain area Friday (Oct. 23) morning, according to Parks Canada officials.

The bear had been spotted by Parks officials and neighbours several times on the tracks and in the area leading up to the incident and had only moved in a couple of weeks ago, said Steve Malcolm, protection and operations coordinator with Jasper National Park (JNP).

While JNP officials believed there was one bear in the area, a second black bear was seen on Saturday morning (Oct. 24), also on the tracks.

“The problem is when they start hanging around those areas, unless they are really familiar with how to deal with the trains, it’s usually just a matter of time before they end up getting smacked,” Malcolm said.

“That black bear just moved in probably in the last couple of weeks and he’s been hanging around the tracks. That’s the problem with that area, Stone Mountain west, there are a couple of big turns on the tracks, and they just get caught in the evening in the lights and they just don’t react fast enough sometimes. So he was hit and killed.”

Usually CN notifies Parks Canada when a bear is struck, but as of Monday, they had not received a report of a train striking a bear. As of October, CN has reported six bears killed by trains this year.

There were reports of the bear eating grain on the tracks, however Malcolm said there wasn’t any evidence of significant grain spills in the area, and there are so many factors that play into why bears like the area that it’s hard to solely put the blame on CN.

The tracks have a lot of green shoots that bears and geese like to eat, he said, which grow on the tracks because they get more sun than in the bush, as well as some grain that germinates in the sun, and the fact that the tracks simply go through bear habitat.

“There are tons of things that you could speculate as to what’s causing it,” he said.

CN has been working on repairing their hopper cars, which includes gate replacements where necessary, and according to CN spokesperson Kevin Franchuk, the project was completed last year, which included rebuilding 3,000 cars.

“A similar program is now underway for grain cars… they have a fleet as well, and we are rebuilding those cars... any defective gates in cars are repaired as they go through regular inspections.”

Franchuk said the tracks are inspected on a daily basis by CN personnel based out of Jasper, and that since the cars have been repaired they have seen less grain on the CN property.

Malcolm agreed that CN has been making a strong effort to repair their cars and clean up the tracks, but said there are a lot of grain cars out there. Often if the engineers are local, they will call Parks dispatch themselves, rather than going through CN first, Malcolm says, and they are very conscientious, they don’t want to hit anything.

“They’ve got little tricks, shutting the lights off sometimes, whatever they can do to mitigate it, but at night especially, it’s the headlights, it’s the paralyzing effect it has on animals sometimes.”

Parks officials tried to identify the bear from a patch on its front chest, but the bear had been decapitated, and Malcolm said it was hard to tell.

“When they get smacked, they get smacked. Usually they get punched in front of the car and then get run over,” said Malcolm.

While Franchuk didn’t say CN employees are trained to work in the mountain areas, he said “most of our employees are familiar with operating in the mountain environment, where bears are present, so they are familiar that you need to watch for wildlife, and in the end, they watch for it just as anyone else in a mountain environment knows and understand wildlife.”

Malcolm said there have been a low number of black bears in the area this year, however there is still at least a second one that has been seen recently.