The Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry will launch black bear surveys in northwestern Ontario next Tuesday.
Regional Outreach Specialist Michelle Nowak says they use barbed-wire hair traps to collect their data.
She says staff set up survey stations with sardines to lure the bears who will rub up against the barbed wire leaving behind hair.
Nowak says the hair samples are sent for DNA analysis to determine how many of the bears who visited the bait station are unique or have been there before.
Nowak notes the last seven-year survey was completed in 2011 and the results found that the population had remain stable for a twenty year period.
She says they counted 85,000-105,000 black bears in Ontario.
Nowak says the data collected from these multi-year surveys will allow the Ministry to reassess the local black bear population.
The exercise is scheduled to run for the next five weeks.
Nowak says this is part of a multi-year survey that started in 2017 and is scheduled to end next year.
