The OFA supports biodiversity and the presence of healthy, self-sustaining wildlife populations across the Ontario landscape. We recognize that black bears are an integral and critical part of that landscape, and a part that must be maintained.
The OFA welcomes this opportunity to present its perspective on the above noted EBR posting. For Ontario farmers across Northern Ontario, human-bear conflicts go beyond threats to personal safety from marauding bears, and include losses to livestock from bear predation and damage to standing crops. In recent years, livestock and crop losses by bears have become a significant problem for Ontario farmers. We note that while Ontario farmers are eligible for compensation for losses to livestock from bear predation, provided that there remains physical evidence of the loss, there is no parallel program providing compensation for crop damage losses by bears.