Nuisance Bears

•Black bear nuisance complaints typically involve crop or livestock devastation, and garbage problems.

•Fed bears frequent developed areas where they are much more likely to be killed by cars than wild bears. They die prematurely from human food sources, as well.

•Most bear deaths reported by the news media are solely attributable to the people who feed them, or who leave their garbage out where bears have easy access to it. Surely you've seen the terrible coverage on TV of bears being shot out of trees or breaking their necks when landing in backyard tampolines. These are 'urbanized' bears do not live long lives.

•According to the folks at Appalachian Bear Rescue, "Any bear that is in developed areas during the day or at night and shows no fear of humans has undoubtably been fed many times before."

•In contrast, black bears can live 25 years or more in the wild, away from human influences.

•But not only are black bears losing their historical range to urban development, they are loosing contiguous travel corridors that allow them to freely move about without assaults from poachers or vehicular traffic and the like. Their habitat is being sliced up into smaller and smaller ranges, many of which no longer connect to each other, where native species of all kinds are introduced to increased predation and competition with invasive species.

The Bear in Folklore and Mythology

•In China the giant panda is seen as a 'national treasure.' In the Great Smoky Mountains, it is the Black Bear.

•And do you know the story about the Big Dipper? According to one version of the Greek legend, Zeus fell is love with Callisto and she gave birth to a son named Arcas. Zeus' wife of course became jealous and turned Callisto into a bear which Arcas later went hunting for, not realizing that he was hunting his own mother. Zeus put Callisto into the night sky so that she would be safe and we could see her -- Ursa Major - or the Big Dipper as we call it today. Eventually Zeus put Arcas into the sky, as well -- as Ursa Minor (or the Little Dipper).

•Bears have been incorporated into native American arts for thousands of years because natives had a special place in their hearts for the American bear, both black bears and grizzly bears. For them, the bear was a symbol of strength and courage.

•Morris Michtom, who made stuffed animals around the turn of the century, was inspired to invent the TEDDY BEAR in response to a cartoon depicting Theodore Roosevelt refusing to shoot a black bear trapped up in a tree.

•Winnie the Pooh - a beloved fictional bear created by A.A. Milne - was named after Winnipeg, a female black bear cub that lived at the London Zoo for almost 20 years.

•It is important to remember that in mythology and song, even in children's stories, the tales often fail to reflect the true nature of bears, giving them a larger-than-life image that is also unfairly ferocious. The North American Bear Center notes that "Bears' teeth, claws, and size have led to their being portrayed in the role of modern dragons in tales of courage against danger. Bears are also demonized in stories set in shadowy forests where fear of the unknown is an element."

•In fact, in Indian tribes generally, there is no essential difference between men and animals. Like people, the animals were organized into tribes called four-footed tribes and even had their chiefs and councils.

•An example of a larger-than-life bear is in the story from Maine entitled "The Fisherman and the Bear." You'll enjoy that if you haven't read it.

Black Bear Cubs and the Threats They Face

•Black bear mothers are excellent and nurturing mothers but the fact is, most cubs do not live out their full lifespan.

•They die from low body weight as they enter the long months of hibernation with their mothers, or they are later hunted as game, poached, killed on roadways, even by male black bears and smaller predators like coyotes.

•People wrongly think that the Black Bear is a vicious animal, and will kill them on sight.

Bears in Our National Parks

•Bears in our national parks (which, by the way, primarily serve as sanctuaries for them) eventually begin to exhibit behaviors that are atypical of the species. This occurs as bears learn to associate humans with food.

•These bears become known as panhandlers, referring to the fact that they begin to beg along the side of roads and raid picnic tables and campsites and, in general, create some potentially hazardous situations.

•Intelligent, opportunistic eaters that they are, bears soon learn to exploit new food sources in what was once their exclusive domain.

•As a result, these panhandlers can cause property damage and even personal injury, even though they represent only a small percentage of the bear population in the national park.

•Yet the bears in this case are the only the symptoms, not the problem. The problem is the people who fed them, or who mindlessly leave behind food and dirty cooking grills when they are camping in the park; or who carry food in their backpacks when hiking into known bear country.

•Rather than promoting aversive conditioning of individual four-footed panhandlers, which is common, the emphasis should be on instituting preventive measures (public education, enforcing wildlife regulations, providing bear-proof food and garbage containers) so that park visitors will not disturb the natural bear population in the area.

•What are some of the aversive measures that park rangers use in some parks? Shouting or throwing objects at the nuisance bears; use of firecrackers and air horns to scare them; use of barking dogs to chase after them; use of electric fencing around trash receptacles; capturing and relocating bears after first marking them; even shooting at the bears with rubber bullets or pellets.

•As you can see, interactions between people and wild animals are not always a source of wonder and inspiration. They can more often create overwhelming conflicts when the public lacks the conservation-oriented education required of them when visiting our parks.

•Surely this is a problematic approach when and if, in fact, the goal is to maintain a natural bear population in a national park.