Reprinted from Sept 2, 2007 column in Morgantown Dominion Post.
Recently I over heard a conversation involving someone who had seen a bear in their yard. "I don’t know what to do," he said. "This bear keeps coming to my back yard and tears up my bird feeder. This has been going on for three weeks, so I guess I’ve got to call the DNR."
Mike Peters, local DNR manager tells me that his phone has been ringing off the hook. This summer the local DNR officials have been besieged with calls about black bears. "The thing is," he told me, "most calls want us to do something just because they’ve seen a bear in the neighborhood." Mikes discussion and the over heard conversation, convinced me to write about this situation.
First, let’s consider the man with the bear in his yard, coming to the bird feeder. There are two glaring problems here. Apparently the bear has been around for awhile, coming to the feeder. A simple assessment of why the bear hangs around is quite evident. The longer he continues to "feed" this bear, the closer that bear comes to dying. It’s true, and its been shown to happen in many states from Pennsylvania to Colorado. Feed the bears, and they get used to humans; they lose fear of humans, and human safety issues arise. The second problem is that he wants to call the DNR to have them remove the bear. In fact, it is all too common for a fed bear to become habituated to feed in an area where there are people. Then it must be trapped and moved.
But you don’t just move such bears twenty miles, because they will be back the next day. In fact, translocated bears often return after being moved one hundred miles. Even more. Thus, trapping and moving bears is quite an expensive process. If such bears continue to cause problems, they may have to be killed. We don’t do that very often in West Virginia, but if we keep food out, especially bird feeders, a bear may become a serious threat to humans.
Allowing some hunting helps, because it does create a little fear of humans. But when there is food in a back yard, bears will come. Some people put food out for bears, so they can watch them. I love watching bears, maybe more than most people. I can understand why someone wants to have bears around, just to watch them interact with each other. But it is a recipe for disaster.
Over the past twenty years, feeding bears got to be a very big deal in Pennsylvania. In many areas of that state, bears became common visitors to back yard bear feeders. I once visited a house in northern Pennsylvania where the man had a video camera and infrared light rigged up to a bear feeder filled with apples in his back yard. He literally flipped the TV to channel three to see what bears were in his back yard at night.
Such feeding situations led to so many problems that several years ago Pennsylvania made it illegal to feed bears. Too many problems; too much danger for humans. And so it is with bird feeders. I love to feed birds, maybe more than most people. However, when a bear visits your bird feeder, you need to take it down for a month or so. Let the bear feed in the woods, rather than in your yard. If everyone did that, there would be a lot more a lot fewer calls to the DNR.
The New Hampshire DNR web site recommends that you take down bird feeders by April 1. The New York Conservation Department web site states that in certain areas 80 percent of bear problems around houses are caused by bird feeders. Once the bears are there, then garbage cans, barbeque grills and compost piles keep them coming. They also note that placing the feeder high off the ground does not prevent bears from coming. Nor does removing the feeders at night because residual feed on the ground still attracts bears.
One last point. Just because you see a bear, doesn’t mean you need to panic. Bears that are not used to humans are rarely a safety problem. So, remove the feed and you usually remove the problem, and in so doing you are helping to keep that bear alive.
