Wildlife and Bear Awareness

Wildlife and Bear Awareness is for everyone who works where wild animals live, on leases, pipeline and power line rights-of-way, camps, mines and cutblocks across Canada, and for the supervisors who plan that work. It covers wildlife as a hazard like any other: the site's wildlife plan, attractants, food conditioning and habituation, and keeping a clean site, camp and truck. It covers making yourself known, reading sign, and working alone in wildlife country. It shows how to tell a grizzly from a black bear by shape, not colour, how to read a bear, and the difference between curious, defensive and predatory encounters, with a section for workers on northern coasts where polar bears live. It teaches carrying, checking and using bear spray, in wind and cold, and what to do when you meet a bear, in a bluff charge, and in a defensive or a predatory attack. It also covers cougars, wolves and coyotes, moose, elk and bison, rattlesnakes, rabies, ticks, stinging insects and hantavirus, wildlife on the road, and reporting every sighting. You sort attractants from things that aren't, find six problems at a pipeline laydown yard, pick out a grizzly's features on a photo, decide which cans of bear spray are ready to use, make the calls when you meet a grizzly with cubs on a right-of-way, match situations with other animals to the right response, find answers in a site's wildlife plan, check your understanding after each module, and finish with a 20-question exam. Pass with 80% and your certificate is issued right away, valid for 36 months. Every screen is narrated, with captions and a full transcript, and you can download a bear spray practice checklist to run hands-on practice with your crew. This course provides general awareness training about wildlife at work. It does not replace your employer's wildlife plan and procedures, your site's orientation, or hands-on practice with bear spray and other deterrents.