Night of the Black Bear (11 page)

E
ach year almost ten million visitors come to Great Smoky Mountains National Park to enjoy the mountains, the mist, the streams, and the history. And just about every visitor hopes to get a look at
Ursus americanus,
the black bear—the symbol of the Smokies. These bears once roamed freely across the entire American continent, but now Great Smoky Mountains National Park and nearby forests are some of their few remaining places of refuge.

We have to remind visitors to the park that bears are wild animals, with behaviors that can be unpredictable. You've probably heard the term “trash talking.” Well, we do talk trash here in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, but we're talking about real trash—the food brought into the park by visitors and the garbage left behind. Food and garbage not properly secured are the sources of our biggest problem in keeping our bears wild.

It can happen this way: A wild bear first goes into Chimneys picnic area, for example, at nighttime. Bears are taught by their mothers to be afraid of people and the smell of people, but the bear has learned there's safety in darkness because people leave the picnic areas at night. The bear smells the remaining odor of fried chicken, hamburgers, and hot dogs in the picnic area—as well as the odor of people—but there's no one around.

So more bears come to the picnic area, lured by the odor of food. Food scraps left behind act as a reward for the bears that tolerate the lingering smell of people. Once they get used to finding and eating these food scraps, they are no longer scared away by the smell of humans.

Their behavior begins to change. Now the bears start to become active earlier, when there
are
people still there. If they find an unattended table with food on it, they'll jump right up on the table. At that point, the quality and the quantity of food the bears eat changes drastically. Now, instead of eating scraps, they're eating a whole meal. Their behavior has been well rewarded.

As this happens again and again, these bears begin to appear whenever people are preparing food or eating. They arrive in the morning, when visitors are cooking breakfast, then come back at lunchtime, and again at dinnertime, when people fire up the charcoal grills. The bears will hang around after dark, searching for more food or scraps. These food-conditioned bears have begun to lose their fear of people, and this creates a dangerous situation for both the bears and the park visitors.

After we began to understand the stages in which wild bears lose their fear of people, we realized that we needed to change their behavior and make them afraid of people again. The key to doing this was to catch them before they became food-conditioned.

We like to think of bear behavior as being similar to people behavior. For instance, you have a better chance of rehabilitating problem kids if you catch them when they're young and just stealing pencils, than if you wait until they grow up and start stealing cars or robbing banks. So, we try to work on bears when they're still at the “stealing pencils” stage by creating a negative experience for them. We capture them with a trap, use drugs to put them to sleep, and for identification purposes we put a tag on one of their ears. We also tattoo them. We'll pull a small tooth to determine how old they are, then wake them and release them right where we caught them.

If we make the negative experience far stronger than the positive experience of getting human food, we'll make the bears afraid of people again, and they won't come back for food. It's a win-win situation for us and for the bears.

It's a lot of work, but it's necessary if we're going to succeed in protecting the bear population in the park. When we find a bear with bad behavior, we deal with that animal. We only put bears down—euthanize them—when one goes into a car, a house, or a structure or becomes extremely aggressive toward our visitors.

Here are some statistics: In Great Smoky Mountains National Park we average two bears per square mile, which comes to a total of between 1,200 and 1,500 bears in the 800-square-mile park. We only put down one or two bears a year. Most people think it's more than that, but we've succeeded in taking the bad behavior out of most of the problem bears.

Basically, bear management in the Smokies has changed from a
re
active program—one that responds to day-active bears that already have an established food-conditioned behavior—to a more
pro
active approach. This means that when we discover bears visiting picnic areas or campgrounds at night, we go after them
before
they have a chance to lose their fear of people. This bear management program has been successful.

What do we tell visitors who may encounter bears on trails or away from developed areas? We advise them that certain bears may be extremely bold in attempting to get food. Visitors must keep their distance from bears in any situation. If the animal changes its behavior—stops feeding or changes directions—you are too close! If the bear makes short runs toward you, makes loud noises, or slaps the ground, the bear is telling you that it wants more space. As a visitor, you need to understand what bears are telling you. What should you do? Back away slowly while watching the bear, but don't turn and run because this could trigger some bears to chase you.

If a bear persists in following you closely, or if it approaches you without vocalizing or paw swatting, try changing your own direction or yield to the bear's travel route. If the bear continues to follow you, stand your ground, yell loudly, and act aggressively by waving your arms or throwing rocks or sticks. Pick up a big stick as a warning. If you are with other people, clump together to appear more threatening to the bear—there is power in numbers. Don't throw food or leave food for the bear, because this often will make the bear more persistent in getting other people's food.

If you think a bear is after your food and it makes contact with you, separate yourself from your food and back away slowly. In the extremely rare case where a bear shows no interest in your food and it comes after you, the general advice is to fight back! Do not play dead.

If you're lucky enough to view a bear in the park, watch it from a safe distance and enjoy this special treat. Enjoy
all
the wildlife in Great Smoky Mountains National Park: the flowers, trees, deer, elk, birds, and yes, those very special salamanders. Spring, summer, autumn, and winter, the park will reveal new beauty with every season.

Kim DeLozier
Supervisory Wildlife Biologist,
Great Smoky Mountains National Park

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