Category Archives: bears

Time to Get Bear Aware in Colorado

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Colorado Bear AwareColorado Parks and Wildlife is looking for Bear Aware volunteers in Glenwood Springs and will train them tomorrow (April 20).

According to Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s website:

Bear Aware is a network of trained Colorado Parks and Wildlife volunteers throughout the state who help their neighbors and communities prevent problems for themselves and for bears. Our Bear Aware program was founded in 1998. Today there are over 220 volunteers, statewide, dedicated to helping people coexist with bears. Bear Aware volunteers can answer questions, offer practical advice and even make house calls. They also do educational programs and staff informational booths at events.

Wildlife managers in the Roaring Fork Valley expect significant bear activity in the region again this year.

“Simple things like keeping trash and food away from bears can help,” said said District Wildlife Manger Dan Cacho, of Glenwood Springs in a press release. “But people often need to be reminded and Bear Aware teams have been effective in spreading education in other communities across Colorado.”

Read the Colorado Parks and Wildlife press release here.
Find out more about the Colorado Bear Aware program here.
Read an article about the call for volunteers in the Aspen Business Journal, here.

Image: Colorado Parks and Wildlife Bear Aware program sticker

Bad Year for Bear-Human Conflicts in Colorado

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Black bearIt started off with a late spring frost that killed off the bears’ seasonal food. It continued with a regional drought. It all added up to the worst year for bear and human conflicts in Colorado since the state started keeping records a few years ago, says an article in the Glenwood Springs Post Independent.

The article quotes Perry Will, a 38-year veteran of Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), a division of the Department of Natural Resources, who manages an area of western Colorado, as saying that he’s never seen a year as bad as this one for conflicts between humans and bears.

Development has set the stage. Colorado’s 5.2 million residents are more likely to hunt or hike or live in bear country, says another article on the topic in The Durango Herald. The state’s surging bear population is another factor the Post Independent article says. Add the frost and the drought, and it’s a recipe for disaster. The number of bears killed this year because of conflicts with humans was nearly triple last year’s total and almost twice as much as the last drought year.

In the article Will says that a year with normal rain could set things right. The state has seen the conflict level drop sharply in the past.

Glenwood Springs Post Independent article, here.
Durango Herald article, here.

Photo: bear, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

Colorado’s Urban Bears, Interim Report

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Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) biologist Heather Johnson recently gave an interim report on her five-year black bear study to the state Parks and Wildlife Commission, the Durango Herald reports.

According to the CPW website, the study is intended to gather more information about the increase in conflicts between black bears and humans in the state. Does the increase reflect black bear population trends, or a change in behavior? To that end, the website says, the study:

1) tests management strategies for reducing bear-human conflicts, including a large-scale treatment/control urban-food-removal experiment; 2) determines the consequences of bear use of urban environments on regional bear population dynamics; 3) develops population and habitat models to support the sustainable monitoring and management of bears in Colorado; and 4) examines human attitudes and perceptions related bear-human conflicts and management practices.

One and a half years in, Johnson has found that female black bear behavior of the 51 collared bears she tracks is highly variable. One collared female never left a three block area in Durango, another wandered for 200 miles.

Up next is an experiment comparing conflicts in an area with bear-proof trash cans to one without the cans. That experiment will begin in the spring.

Read more about the study in the Durango Herald, here.
Read brief discriptions of CPW’s black bear research, here.

Photo: Heather Johnson, courtesy Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

Drought Impacts

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The drought continues, particularly in the West, but the wildlife impact being most noticed and reported is bears coming into developed areas searching for food.

The New York Times discussed the situation, with vivid anecdotes. A Colorado State University Extension web page gives an overview on drought impacts as part of a package of drought information, with half of the info on bears. A Mother Nature Network story went beyond bears. It provides links to specific stories on drought impacts, such as one on waterfowl in USA Today and a Wyoming Star-Tribune piece on pronghorn.

The pronghorn piece mentions the impact on hunting, but the waterfowl article does not. Farmers tilling under crops early this year or not harvesting them at all, will create confusion for waterfowl hunters who may find that field they always hunted in off limits this year because of baiting regulations. This press release from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources explains some of the issues.

Summer’s Grizzly-death Pattern a Puzzle

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Yellowstone grizzly

The percentage grizzly bears dieing from natural causes is up, so the percentage of grizzly bears killed by humans in the Greater Yellowstone area so far this summer is way down, says an article in the Jackson Hole News & Guide, citing data from Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team.

The increase in natural deaths may be due to the advancing age of the grizzly population, the article says.

The study team is collecting data that will inform a decision on whether area grizzly bears will remain “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act.

See the numbers and the theories behind the unusual mortality numbers in the Jackson Hole News & Guide article.

Photo of a grizzly bear in Yellowstone by Terry Tollefsbol

Summer’s Grizzly-death Pattern a Puzzle

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Yellowstone grizzly

The percentage grizzly bears dieing from natural causes is up, so the percentage of grizzly bears killed by humans in the Greater Yellowstone area so far this summer is way down, says an article in the Jackson Hole News & Guide, citing data from Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team.

The increase in natural deaths may be due to the advancing age of the grizzly population, the article says.

The study team is collecting data that will inform a decision on whether area grizzly bears will remain “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act.

See the numbers and the theories behind the unusual mortality numbers in the Jackson Hole News & Guide article.

Photo of a grizzly bear in Yellowstone by Terry Tollefsbol

Rattlesnakes and Grizzlies: Endangered?

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Face to face with an eastern rattlesnake or a grizzly bear, you might not feel that it was the animal that was endangered. However, the eastern rattlesnake came closer to a possible Endangered Species Act listing earlier this month when the US Fish and Wildlife Service began a 12-month review of the species’ status.

Read more in the Chicago Tribune.

Meanwhile, in Canada, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada found no solid evidence of decline in the nation’s grizzly bear population overall, so it denied the species endangered species status, instead designating the western population a species of “special concern.”

Read all about it in the Ottawa Citizen.

Rattlesnakes and Grizzlies: Endangered?

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Face to face with an eastern rattlesnake or a grizzly bear, you might not feel that it was the animal that was endangered. However, the eastern rattlesnake came closer to a possible Endangered Species Act listing earlier this month when the US Fish and Wildlife Service began a 12-month review of the species’ status.

Read more in the Chicago Tribune.

Meanwhile, in Canada, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada found no solid evidence of decline in the nation’s grizzly bear population overall, so it denied the species endangered species status, instead designating the western population a species of “special concern.”

Read all about it in the Ottawa Citizen.

Be Bear Aware in May

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The California Department of Fish and Game sent out a press release reminding people to act responsibly in bear country, and offered tips for bear-proofing a camp site. The New Jersey Division of Fish & Wildlife is offering a free DVD of an hour-long documentary entitled “Living with New Jersey Black Bears.” Another press release was issued by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

May is “Be Bear Aware” Month. Other activities include Bear Awareness Week at the Detroit Zoo, which features polar bears and seems to be a little outside of the original theme for the month, which has a focus on safety.

The bear-themed month appears to be the brainchild of the Center for Wildlife Information. There was even a Congressional declaration about four years ago, proclaiming May as bear awareness month.

The state of Alaska declared its bear awareness week to be in April.

California Department of Fish and Game press release.
New Jersey Division of Fish & Game free bear DVD announcement.
Center for Wildlife Information’s Be Bear Aware info.
Detroit Daily Tribune story on the Detroit Zoo’s bear awareness week.
Connecticut DEEP press release.

Photo: Black bear, courtesy of the California Department of Fish and Game.

Disease Round-up: Rare, Rabid Bear; Desert Fox Distemper Spreads & more

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Canada goose in AlabamaRabid bears are “almost unheard of” in the eastern half of the United States. After all, transmission is typically through the bite of infected animal, and what’s going to bite a bear?

Apparently something bit a black bear in Albermarle, Virginia, because after it attacked a man, it was tested and found to have rabies.

This is gotten more coverage since, but the first article I saw on this was on GoDanRiver.com

In the Mojave Desert, an outbreak of canine distemper in desert kit foxes near a solar power installation is spreading, with dead foxes found 11 miles from the original site. Read more in the Victorville Daily Press.

We’ve written about this distemper outbreak twice before. Read the first post here. The second post, with possible causes, is here.

And while we just posted news about bullfrogs spreading chytrid fungus between continents a few days ago, yet another study shows that geese — both escaped domestic and Canada geese — can spread chytrid fungus between water bodies, either as they migrate, or simply as they visit ponds and lakes in their own neighborhood.

Read the article in ScientificAmerican.com
Or read the scientific paper with the findings in PLoS ONE.

Photo: Canada goose in Alabama, by Gary M. Stolz, courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service