Nuisance bears

 

I would have preferred to use a different title for this because this one suggests that all the blame lies with bears. Usually, but not always, people share some of the blame by ignoring information released every year on how to avoid/reduce problems with bears; this was in the April 2 issue of this paper. Sometimes people deserve all the blame by deliberately feeding a bear either because it looks thin and they want to help it, or because they like to see bears. Bears are quite intelligent and quickly learn where the food comes from, and where to get more. It is not unusual, or unexpected, that they sometimes decide to break in and take more. Worse yet, bears sometimes damage the property of innocent neighbors.

The vast majority of problems have always involved garbage cans and bird feeders (including hummingbird feeders). Our family solved the garbage can problem by putting all food scraps that might smell in a container in the freezer until the morning of garbage collection day. Non-smelly trash was bagged and stored elsewhere until garbage day too. However, very few people were willing to make any extra effort to avoid problems.

Although birds do not really need to be fed in summer, many people greatly enjoy watching them and feeding will attract many birds. Some feeders can be brought in at night, but those mounted on houses or trees are vulnerable. It is difficult to put them where bears cannot get to them. Even hanging feeders on a line strung between 2 trees is not always effective.

Burn barrels used to be a significant problem (I do not know if they still are) as people used to put their food waste in with some paper, light a fire, and thought they were incinerating the food. All they accomplished was warming the food which then gave off even more odor to drift in the air and attract bears.

Another chronic problem was U.S. Forest Service campgrounds scattered throughout the forest. For many years there were only garbage cans for trash disposal. Small wonder bears were attracted to them; they were in bear habitat. After a few years of trapping many bears in those campgrounds, I suggested they go to dumpsters with lids rather than garbage cans. The local offices said “No”, so I went to the Forest Supervisors Office in Duluth and met with the Forest Service official in charge of their campgrounds on the Superior National Forest. He agreed with me. Garbage cans were out, dumpsters were in. That greatly reduced the problem. It was rare to trap bears at State Parks as the resident managers kept their guests in line.

Apple trees are prime targets of bears every fall. I always had sympathy for apple tree owners as it is very difficult to keep bears out of them. Tree damage varied from minor limb breakage to complete destruction of the tree. Many bears were trapped and relocated in attempts to prevent damage to those trees, many more were legally shot.

Resorts and restaurants often had chronic bear problems and many of them put considerable effort (and sometimes expense) into trying to foil bears seeking food. Many resorts waited until late evening to empty garbage cans so that they could include the waste from the evening cleaning of fish. Occasionally, we trapped some bears at those locations too.

Some of us decided that as long as we were trapping and relocating nuisance bears, we should drug and tag non-destructive bears to find out where they go after being released. That also gave us the opportunity to determine sex, age, weight and various measurements of the bears involved. As we expected, the vast majority of nuisances were young males. Their mothers had kicked them out and were caring for new cubs. Young females are usually allowed to stay in a portion of their mother’s home range/territory, but the young males were searching for food and a place to live where they could avoid adult males.

Adult bears (both sexes) often returned to their home ranges/territories; some within a few days even though they had been taken 30 to 40 miles from it. Bears have great ability to find their way home. Some were soon re-trapped as nuisances. But I remember 2 adult males that were not re-trapped until 8 and 9 years later; both within a few feet of the same burn barrel, at the same residence. On the other hand, one adult male was shot by a hunter halfway between Thunder Bay and Nipigon. Most bears I tagged were never recaptured or reported as having been shot.

Fortunately, very few nuisance bears are aggressive. Some will huff, puff, and stamp their feet very rapidly. It can be startling, and they are telling you they do not want you there, but that they are afraid of you too. I found they usually could be scared off but would return within a few hours, or less. Bears have the potential of being dangerous so I cannot recommend being too bold.

Aggressive and/or destructive bears were killed. Usually property damage was not great, but we could not risk releasing them. Sometimes the damage was more than most people can even imagine.

D.N.R. conservation officers and wildlife managers trapped, transported and released hundreds of nuisance bears every year for many years. This did nothing to reduce the problem and it continued to get worse. Eventually it got to where these bears were taking up so much time that it greatly interfered with other important duties of everyone involved. In the late 1990’s it was decided that bears were not to be trapped unless they were within a city where they could not be shot. Even these bears were to be killed after being trapped.

Some people were quite upset that we were no longer running a free pest removal operation for them. One person was very angry that I would no longer trap bears coming to his bird feeder. Too few people were willing to take steps to reduce attracting bears. Unfortunately bears paid the price.

Although I like bears and often trapped and relocated them just to keep them from being shot for very minor reasons (sometimes just because the person involved hated bears), their numbers do need to be controlled. In addition to concerns of people about property damage and such, bears are quite efficient predators on newborn deer fawns and moose calves. I recall reading one research paper from Alaska that found bear predation was more significant than was wolf predation on moose calves in that study.