PUTNEY — Bear sightings have been increasing all over Vermont, especially along the Connecticut River Valley.
This summer, sightings of several black bears in backyards in Putney have generated concern from residents.
That concern prompted the Putney Conservation Commission to ask State Fish and Wildlife biologist Forrest Hammond, who has studied both grizzly and black bears for almost 30 years, to speak to the community about how to live with the animals.
“We've been getting calls about people seeing more bears looking for food [in their backyards], and decided it was appropriate to hold a community discussion to help people learn how to live with bears and be safe,” said Conservation Commission member Ann Kerrey.
She described one encounter with bears here in Vermont, a sow with cubs.
“They were about a football field away at the edge of the woods,” she said. “I let them know we were there, talking to her and telling her we needed to go through to our car. She wasn't rushed, but she did corral her cubs and move them off into the woods so we could get to our car.”
Was Kerrey scared?
“No.”
Young Caleb Banis came up from Brattleboro to listen to the talk “because I want to know more about bears.” He said he and his uncle had seen a bear once, but he “wasn't scared” and “thought it was kind of cool.”
He said he is going camping later this summer and wants to know what to do if they encounter a bear on their trip.
Several of the nearly 60 people who showed up for the talk at the Putney Fire House had seen bears recently, describing their encounters before the talk began.
The attitudes about having to deal with bears ranged from genuine curiosity and concern for the bears, to questions about what to expect from a bear encounter, to apprehension about whether a bear could be expected to come into a garden looking for food.
Hammond, describing the black bear as the “largest carnivore in Vermont, and a symbol of the wildness,” said that the increased population of bears, and the extension of their habitat along the Connecticut River Valley, is a result of a management plan begun 20 years ago.
“We surveyed people in Vermont and asked them what they wanted to see where black bears were concerned. The overwhelming response was, 'We want to see more bears.' And now we are seeing more bears, and their habitat is increasing as they seek new territory.”
Bear population pockets were known in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont and around Cavendish in the 1950s, but numbered only a few hundred bears. The population in Vermont is now estimated at somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 bears.
Hammond explained that one source of conflict is that “bears like all the same foods we do.”
Potential danger
With the spread of population into areas where bears have rarely been spotted before, such as in Windham County along the Connecticut River, “there is an increased risk of potential danger to people” simply because “most people feed birds and have garbage cans” that attract bears near their homes.
Bears can smell suet and black oil sunflower seeds from as far away as two miles.
“This is where the danger comes in,” Hammond noted. “If a sub-adult bear discovers your birdfeeder, that bear is not going to forget where he got it. Even if you take the birdfeeder down, that bear will be back and, not finding the food at your house, will go to your neighbor's house and look there. You've just brought a potential risk into your neighborhood, even though you took your bird food in.”
Questions were raised by several people in the audience about what constituted a nuisance bear, and how that behavior differed from what was normal behavior. A recent attack on a Cabot woman on her front porch has fomented some misconceptions about bear behavior, making bears into more fearsome creatures in the minds of people in the region.
Hammond explained that what happened in Cabot could be considered a rarity.
“It was a situation of a bear encounter going wrong, but it did involve a sow and her cub,” he said. “That mother bear was doing what she thought she needed to do to protect a cub she considered to be in danger. That was not a bear attack per se. That bear was acting normally.”
When there is a case of a nuisance bear, wildlife officials know someone inadvertently left food out for it.
Hammond is clear that the state agency is coming up with a new plan to manage the population as bears move through more populated areas like Putney looking for food.
“Most people have never lived around bears,” he said. “In Vermont, fortunately, bears are not seen as a nuisance species like they are in Massachusetts and Connecticut. People like their bears here.”
Hammond said that education is the key to keeping humans and bears safe. “We are really glad when people call us and want us to come have a discussion with the community about black bears.”
“People like to feed the birds because they like to watch them,” Hammond told the Putney audience. “When I was a kid, hardly anyone had bird feeders, so we didn't have the problem we do now.”
But, he warned, “if you're one of those people who like to do that, you should also have enough respect for the bears that live around you to take that feeder in around the beginning of April.”
“Bird seed is high in nutrition for a bear that's just come out of hibernation,” Hammond said. “And that bear is leaving a signal in his scat about that food source for other bears, who will find it as a result.”
Omnivores
An industry has grown up around designing and building better “bear-proof” food containers and garbage bins, and some bears seem to take it as a challenge to get into them, said Hammond.
One such bear in the Adirondack region of upstate New York, an adult female named Yellow-Yellow for the tracking tags in her ears, has become so adept at opening containers that one manufacturer created a special disclaimer for its product sold in that region.
The wildlife biologists in the area say that this bear, and likely others, know there is a food source every summer on which they can depend, so they have to get into the bins to eat. And they do, every time.
“Black bears are smart,” said Hammond. “They are probably smarter than the average dog. They remember things, they learn, and use what they know.”
You might think that if you keep your fragrant garbage can inside for two nights, a bear will have forgotten about it. But even after a year, ”that bear is likely to come back and look for it,” Hammond said.
Young males, on average about 17 months old, are the bears of most concern to Vermont bear biologists.
“They are on their own for the first time and have to find new territory and their own sources of food,” Hammond said.
In the spring, males wake up first, and will be out in the woods as soon as the snow disappears enough for them to get around easily, a good two months before the females will awaken with their cubs.
Bears traditionally live and travel along ridgelines, but in the spring, they will especially seek low-lying areas along valley floors and stream beds where they can find and eat the early-blooming skunk cabbage or grasses that arrive first. It's a stressful time for black bears.
Hammond said some bears get so hungry and desperate in the spring that they will climb beech trees to get at the early buds.
“Imagine a 125- to 160-pound bear way up in a tree trying to get out on a limb to those buds,” he said, laughing. “But they will if they are hungry enough.”
While bears are essentially omnivores, like humans, a diet of beech nuts and acorns is a primary food source in the fall and spring.
Consequently, Vermont's black bears seek beech and oak clusters.
In Vermont, corn fields, commercially grown blueberry and raspberry fields, are also prime attractions for bears to feed. Hammond recommends growers “make sure to have a large open area around the areas, because bears don't like to cross open space,” and that farmers harvest the field closest to the woods first at harvest time.
“A black bear can flatten a field while they just sit there and feed on the corn,” he said, as he showed a slide of a corn field, taken from the air, with dozens of large, irregular open spaces.
Fight or flight
Part of the state's management program, he said, has to include educating people about what to expect from bears and bear encounters.
“Bears are wild creatures, said Hammon. “So, you have to be smart. Smarter than they are. It's important to know, though, that [healthy black bears] have a strongly developed flight response when startled, unlike grizzlies, whose response is to stay and confront the danger.”
A black bear's flight response is both a good thing and a bad thing when it comes to running into such a bear unexpectedly.
“The only time a black bear will attack is when it feels threatened or trapped, meaning you are between it and its getaway. Then, you are in danger,” Hammond said.
He described a man who said he had been attacked by a bear standing in front of a cameraman without a scratch on him.
“That wasn't an attack,” Hammond smiled. “That bear just ran right over him trying to get away. He was standing in front of his escape route. A bear will leave a lot of damage if it attacks.”
Bears can feel threatened when a food source runs out, and you are near them when that happens.
“If you've been feeding them bird seed or garbage, and suddenly you remove that source, that bear could get angry and turn on you,” Hammond said. “Black bears are irritable. They can switch moods in a second. They do have that characteristic.”
For the most part, though, Hammond said black bears are not a threat to human beings, and will run away or hide if they see you coming.
“Bears are all around you in the woods,” Hammond said, particularly now that the bear population has spread to most of the state.
“People who like to hike in the forested hills need to know that just because you can't see them doesn't mean they aren't there ...they are just hiding,” he said “A bear can disappear in the forest, and you'll never see him.”
Alaskan bear experts recommend making noise as you hike so you don't surprise a bear, such as by calling out, “Hey, bear; hey, bear.” Some people carry bells attached to their backpacks.
Will a bear attack you in the woods?
Unlikely, Hammond said, “unless it's a sow and you got between her and her cubs.”
What do you do when a bear does not run away when it sees you?
“Make yourself as big as you can, talk loudly, and back slowly away while looking at the bear,” Hammond recommended.
He also advised not to let the bear see you being scared. Sensing fear, it might attack.
Hammond referred to Bill Killem of Lyme N.H., a noted black bear rehabilitator of orphaned and lost cubs, who has a unique suggestion. Killem thinks that, “if you are brave enough,” making yourself bigger than the bear, looking it in the eye, and walking toward it - as another bear would do - will make the bear leave.
Hammond said another example of a situation that can potentially put the owner at risk is walking in the woods with a small dog off the leash.
“There've been documented cases where the dog ran off to chase a bear. If it's a sow with cubs, she'll make sure the cubs are safe up a tree, then turn on the dog and chase it. That dog's natural tendency is to go running back to its owner with the bear chasing it. Now what are you going to do? That bear is likely going to attack the owner.”
And the dog is unlikely to survive the attack, as most dogs will try to defend their owners, no matter how big or small compared to the bear.
Hammond said walking with a dog on a leash is a whole different ball game. A dog on a leash is unlikely to trap or threaten a bear. A bear can escape and run away, as is its tendency to do when encountering humans.
Again, the key is to be aware of not trapping a bear from an escape route, and not making it feel threatened, as a sow cut off from her cubs will feel.
“If you are running in the woods, as people like to do in Vermont, remember you are living in bear country. Keep your dog on a leash under your control.”
Hammond said that bear spray is only effective in an actual attack, is unlikely to have the reach otherwise, and is not the most effective deterrent. But, he said, prevention is.
Preventing harm to bears
State biologists want to know about black bears that will not be driven off by loud noises, such as banging pots and pans, people yelling at them, firecrackers, or objects that produce similar sounds.
“Those are bears that have become tolerant to human populations,” Hammond said. “ At some point, they are going to get into trouble. When a bear enters your yard, you want that bear to know not to come back.”
He said if you stand behind closed doors and snap pictures of the “cute bear,” that bear thinks that “humans are okay,” and will come back.
Hammond went on to describe two bear incidents, one in Dummerston last year, and one in Brattleboro several years ago, where bears habituated to humans got near heavily populated areas and were felt to be a danger to the people in the communities.
“They were shot,” he said.
Tranquilizing and relocating a troublesome bear might seem the humane thing to do, but “it's not. That bear just become someone else's problem. And bears have been known to travel several hundred miles back to where they came from.”
This brings the bear full circle. “A fed bear is a dead bear,” Hammond said.
“We want to prevent that before it happens,” Hammond said. “That's why we come to communities like Putney when calls start mounting up about people seeing bears in their yards.”
“If we can educate people that feeding a bear, providing any sort of food source, even once, puts both the bear, them, and their community at risk, then it's possible for both bears and humans to live with each other without being a risk to each other.”