More people are seeing bears in the Prince Albert National Park. Here's why that's concerning.

Many of Saskatchewan’s summer destinations are known for providing an opportunity to see wildlife, and one of the most elusive of the animals in the province has been making more of an appearance this year.

Experts say that’s cause for concern.

When visitors check into the campgrounds in Prince Albert National Park, they all get the warning — this is bear country.

“There’s a much higher number of bear conflicts with people this year and so it stands to reason that that's as a result to people behavior,” Digit Guedo, a Parks Canada wildlife ecologist told CTV News.

Guedo assures visitors that black bears are not predatory in nature. Issues are overwhelmingly the result of humans being careless with food sources.

This results in easy meals for bears, which could make them habituated to the food and lead to unwanted encounters.

“Like damaging properties, laying right in front of people's cabins on doormats, likely because they've had food at that site. It puts their safety at risk, but it also puts the people in that area at risk,” Guedo says.

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With more than 200,000 annual visitors to the park, officials work hard to prevent people from setting themselves up for a risky encounter with a bear.

“Almost all of our human wildlife conflicts that involve bears, are due to unsecured wildlife attractants or intentional feeding. A reminder that intentional feeding of wildlife is illegal and you could face [a] court appearance and up to $25,000 in fines,” said Scott Nesbitt, acting external relations manager for the park.

Those who monitor bears in this park are not seeing an increase in the number of bears overall, which is also what the provinces Ministry of Environment tells CTV News.

“Black bears have a low reproductive rate and populations change very little year to year. In Saskatchewan, female black bears will not have cubs of their own until they are four or five years old. Saskatchewan black bear populations are currently considered stable,” the ministry said in a statement.

The province tracks the bear population through data collected in the mandatory hunter harvest survey, the ministry says.

Since there are the same number of bears with more sightings, Guedo warns, it’s humans that need to change their behavior to fix the problem.

“If you have a bear that's continually seeking out those rewards, then they will have more instances of interacting with people because they might have a circuit that they do and so you're getting reports of the same bear that's just trying to get that food reward.”

This season, one visitor reported a bear bluff-charging towards them, meaning they made a move towards the individual. According to the wildlife expert, it was protecting an elk it recently killed so it was letting the person know, to stay away.

Guedo hasn’t heard of any reports in recent years of people being attacked by a black bear in the park.

“Seeing a bear, in and of itself, is a great thing. It’s a great sign, as long as people are being respectful to that bear,” adding that getting too close to take that perfect selfie is a very bad idea.

In July, a bear had frequented the busy town site of Waskesiu and had to be tranquilized for relocation. The bear retreated up a tree in a very highly populated area of the town and staff waited for the animal to come down. They placed tires at the base of the tree to ensure it was not injured on the way down.

This sort of procedure is not what park officials want to do because it puts the bears at risk. It’s one of the last resorts. The very last is putting bears down, which is avoided, if at all possible.