Human Bear Conflicts

There have been a couple of bear complaints in the last few months, which caught the eyes of the Lily: Bear with a Bounty advocates and fans on the Facebook; and the newspaper and TV media. I think we all know that we can't trust the Bounty page people to present and unbiased view of these incidents, or at the very least not to show or allow a rebuttal on their page. And I've not seen any balanced reporting on the issue either, with both the TV and the newspapers content to show just the one side - people afraid of bears – without showing or explaining why these incidents occurred.

In many cases, it is food, or the lack of - natural food, that causes bear conflicts with humans. I think a recent presentation by Dr. Lynn Rogers will help you understand why bears interact with people, and how it may not be as dangerous, or as ominous. as some people make it out to be. Following are some excerpts from Dr. Lynn Rogers on bears and their interactions with people.

"… we're going to present 2 long-term case studies where food led bears out of trouble. It worked as a non-lethal tool, and during the decades of study, the data gave us a very different perspective on feeding, habituation, and food-conditioning. Some people thought bears were learning to like people's food at the campground, becoming habituated there, and then looking for easy meals of the same food at homes along the river. But, that line of thought does not consider how scarce food is in the woods and what the bears' alternatives might be.

It all boils down to what bears eat and what they do depend on their alternatives. They prefer a short list of digestible, nutritious wild foods. When those foods are scarce they turn to lower quality foods, including people's food. In northeastern Minnesota preferred foods in spring are new leaves and ant brood. In July and August, the main time of fattening there, add berries and hazelnuts. After that, food disappears, and bears in that region are genetically programmed to enter dens in September and October.

Northeastern Minnesota differs from the rest of Minnesota. The growing season is shorter, … and the soil is shallower and less fertile. With the shallow soil it doesn't take much drought to dry up the berries. Between drought, insect outbreaks, and temperature variations, food differs from year to year. When preferred wild foods are very abundant, as happens only occasionally, few bears are even seen. They prefer the wild foods. When wild food is only moderately abundant, bears may be attracted to people's food but will move on if people remove the attractants. In years when wild foods are very scarce, like during multi-year droughts in western states (2007) and sometimes in other habitats—including northeastern Minnesota— reducing attractants means the only food left is inside, which means break-ins. And aversive conditioning in those years just makes bears more sneaky. Here, a bear ignored garbage to tear into insulation that gives off formic acid and smells like an ant colony. Ant brood is a preferred food.

Problems can also be bad in campgrounds. This U. S. Forest Service campground—and a string of residences that stretched out 3 miles each way along a river—were notorious for bear problems back in the early 1980's.During 1981 to 1983, officials had to remove 6 bears from the area for scattering garbage, damaging property, and approaching people. Some people thought bears were learning to like people's food at the campground, becoming habituated there, and then looking for easy meals of the same food at homes along the river. But, that line of thought does not consider how scarce food is in the woods and what the bears' alternatives might be.

U. S. Forest Service officials hypothesized that the problem was not bears LEARNING to eat people's food, not habituation and food-conditioning, but simply hunger in years of poor natural food. They explored a non-lethal method to alleviate problems. In 1984, they began an 8-year diversionary feeding experiment. They began placing beef fat a quarter mile from the campground. They used beef fat because it's LESS preferred than the preferred wild foods but more preferred than most human food. It worked. No nuisance problems developed that year in the campground or along the entire 6-km long problem area without reducing attractants.

Hungry bears that move south run into big Lake Superior and get funneled along the shore to towns, including Duluth. In late summer, hunters began baiting as usual, but bears went to the bait piles in unusual numbers, and hunter success nearly tripled (Joselyn and Lake 1987). Nearby, a long-term bear study, separate from the feeding study, showed us the problems bears were facing. 6 of 10 cubs being studied that year starved. 6 of 7 yearlings died. Adults were losing weight and aborting pregnancies.

In their search for food, the bears were traveling farther than ever and experiencing the highest human-caused mortality of that entire 23-year study. The 90 bears killed in Duluth included 3 old study bears that had previously spent their lives 90 to 107 km away in roadless wilderness. But the diversionary feeding area remained trouble-free. Two mothers with cubs and 10 other habituated and food-conditioned bears that visited the feeding site 278 times ate 313 kg of beef fat and stayed out of trouble. During the 8 years of the experiment, officials saw an 88% reduction in removals compared with the previous 3 years.

The only bears removed were 2 newcomers that hadn't yet found the diversionary feeding site. During the bad food year of 1985, we heard of two other trouble-free areas. One was a 10-mile radius around the huge Grand Marais dump, which was also a tourist attraction where bears and people mingled. (Personal communication, DNR Wildlife Manager Wm. Peterson, 1985). The bears had food and didn't become nuisances at residences. The only complaint from the 10-mile radius was about a bear sleeping in someone's yard.

The second area was a rural community of nearly 500 residents where a dozen homeowners had hand-fed bears for at least 24 years. We investigated further. The feeding had begun as diversionary feeding and eventually became recreational feeding that served the same purpose. Residents had learned what black bears are like directly from the bears. They saw for themselves that black bears are not the ferocious animals portrayed by the media. The bears changed people's attitudes. It takes two things to make a complaint, what a bear does and how the person feels about it.

Seeing a bear was no longer reason to get the gun or file a complaint. With reliable feeding stations in the community, there were no bad food years and few problems. The community wanted to coexist with the bears. Ten years of records kept by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (1996 to 2005) showed only 2 bear complaints from the community—that's 80% lower than the statewide average. The 2 complaints, both from the same person, were for a bear at a bird feeder and for a sub-adult looking in a window. No attacks. No break-ins. No aggression. If THOSE problems had existed, residents would not have fed bears and coexisted with them now for 50 years. Where people didn't want to see bears, reducing attractants was extra effective because the bears had other places to eat.

Avoiding people away from feeding stations also held for a dispersing young male as he traveled 396 km (that's 246 miles) in a year, circumventing the communities and residences along his way. Bears varied, and a few bears learned to recognize our voices and let our researchers join them anywhere. These bears went about their lives, basically ignoring the researchers. The bears spent most of their time out in the woods working hard for a variety of wild foods, as the latest studies of bear nutrition would predict. Diversionary feeding did not change the bears' wild food preferences. No bear became lazy and dependent. Many went months or years between visits to feeding sites. They did not try to obtain the largest number of calories for the least expenditure of energy. They energetically pursued their wild agendas. Females maintained normal territories.

One 9-year-old female had access to ten feeding stations but spent most of her time foraging for wild foods, living a full wild life, and avoiding people. In the 8 years we have monitored her, she has never visited the big campground in her area. We found the local bear population to be similar to the overall population, about 1 bear per 4 square kilometers.

These fed bears were not dead bears. Cubs had 87% survival, and adults included some of the OLDEST bears in the population at 24 and 26 years of age. In these 2 long-term case studies, diversionary feeding was a non-lethal tool that reduced human-bear conflict 80 to 88%--even where bears were habituated and food-conditioned.