Spring is here and soon the bears will follow.

With warming temperatures and the first grizzly bear already spotted in Banff National Park last month, Jasper National Park public safety officers say it’s not unusual for bears to start coming out in April.

Any place where there is greenery on the land, south facing slopes and along roadsides and railway tracks where there is an immediate food source, will likely be the first place bears will head to when they come out of hibernation, say JNP officials.

Those are the traditional areas where they are spotted, JNP Public Safety Officer A.L. Horton said, and Jasper is right on track this year to start seeing bears. He said the trails are muddy, keeping some hikers and bikers off the trails but that it’s possible some bears are already out.

“It’s a good time for people to make sure that they don’t have anything that could be an attractant out. Bottles, bird feeders, that sort of thing should all be taken in and cleaned up. If they have trees with any remnants of fruit – apple trees or berry-producing trees – take the time to rake the fruit that’s on the ground,” Horton says.

It was an unusually cold fall, and some fruit was frozen onto trees, which he says could be an attractant, but hopefully the bears won’t come into town.

Typically, grizzly bears den at higher elevations and tend to come out a little later than black bears, but it’s hard to measure Horton says, as bears occasionally come out in the middle of winter.

Residents and visitors with dogs should remember that it is important to keep them on a leash if they are out on trails. If you see a bear, give it lots of space.

“They are definitely going to be food-focused,” says Horton. “Remember they are coming off a hibernation where they haven’t had real food and they’ve been relying on their own body reserves since November, so they are really hungry and don’t need to be disturbed right now. Any energy that they are putting out, they want to be putting toward getting food, versus defending or running away or interacting with other things. They just want to spend their energy to start getting their reserves back up.”

Hikers are reminded to travel in groups, make lots of noise and carry bear spray when on the trails.