Deviant Behavior

The black bear has few natural enemies, but an acquired taste for human food can be fatal

BY ELISE LeQUIRE

When European settlers reached the shores of America five centuries ago, Ursus americanus ranged across the entire continent, from Newfoundland to Mexico, from Alaska to Florida. With few natural enemies-aside from Native Americans with bows and arrows-and abundant sources of food, the black bear thrived. As the settlers began to clear the forests, plow the land, and hunt with guns, however, the reclusive black bear began to head for the hills and swamps.

In the southern Appalachians at the turn of the 20th century, the black bear's habitat had shrunk drastically, and intensive logging and deforestation further reduced the bears' numbers and range. By the 1930s, when the National Park Service began acquiring land for Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the black bear's range was restricted to a few isolated and densely forested areas.

In addition, one of the staples of the southern black bear's diet had vanished by the 1930s and 40s; a blight introduced from Asia at the turn of the century had destroyed the American chestnut tree and with it an abundant and reliable source of protein. Chestnuts had once constituted some 40 percent of the forest. Though omnivorous, the black bear relies on seasonal availability of a variety of food, from spring grasses to summer berries and fruit to fall mast such as acorns. It also feeds on yellow jacket nests, ant colonies, and carrion but rarely seeks live prey.

Though carbohydrates make up a large part of its diet, the black bear needs protein to fatten up for winter. Since the chestnut blight, bears have had to depend on acorns from oak trees, a much less reliable source of forage subject to failure from early frosts that damage the blossoms and late drought that causes poor production.

Bears Rebound
When the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) began keeping records in the 1950s, the annual bear harvest from legal hunting was the best measure of bear numbers in the state, and the numbers were very low, ranging from a handful to barely 50 bears. In fact, the population was considered so small that for two years, in 1970 and 1971, bear hunting was suspended. The National Park Service likewise began to worry about the bear population in the Smokies, where the bear is protected from legal hunting but not from poaching and poor mast years.

Enter the era of modern bear management. In 1968, Michael Pelton was finishing his doctorate in wildlife biology at the University of Georgia. "That year, the National Park Service approached us about low numbers of bears in the Park and asked us to find out how many they had, to keep track of them from year to year, and to address the nuisance bear problem they had at the time."

Pelton, who recently retired from the University of Tennessee's (UT) Department of Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries, has devoted more than 30 years to research in bear population dynamics and behavior. He has seen the bear population experience a phenomenal rebound, not just in the Park but also in the national forests that border the Park. In just the past decade, the number of bears in the Park has soared from an estimated 400-600 to about 1,800, a number that has remained fairly constant in the last three years. TWRA estimates the total population in the Southern Appalachian region at 6,500 bears. This region includes a number of federal lands, such as Cherokee National Forest north and south of the Park, and Pisgah and Nantahala national forests to the east.

A number of natural factors and changes in management are at work in this rebound, Pelton says. "From the natural standpoint, the maturing of the forests up and down the Appalachian range, from Maine to Georgia, provides more food in the form of oak and, further north, beechnut." There is also better compliance with hunting regulations. In addition, Pelton's early research revealed that females den earlier than males, so he recommended to TWRA "a neat mechanism to skew the ratio toward males being taken in hunting." The hunting season in Tennessee was delayed to allow females to den up, and wildlife managers in West Virginia followed suit.

In the past two decades, the state fish and wildlife agencies of North Carolina and Tennessee have also helped boost the bear population by creating sanctuaries on national forests in their respective states where hunting is not allowed. "Since most of the dispersing animals from these sanctuaries are males, that leaves a nucleus population of productive females," Pelton says. The males, which typically leave their home territory in their second year, are more likely to encounter hunters, automobiles, and other hazards. But since bears are polygamous by nature, sufficient numbers of females are impregnated to ensure healthy fertility rates. On average, a female has two cubs, which remain with her until their second summer.

Three Strikes
In 1902, conservationist and avid bear hunter Teddy Roosevelt visited Yellowstone National Park and later wrote about the behavior of tourists, who each evening would observe, at close range, bears feeding on garbage outside their hotel. One "too-inquisitive tourist" approached a black bear, which attacked and bit him, inflicting a fairly serious wound. Roosevelt observed, "Of course among the thousands of tourists there is a percentage of fools."

Today, millions of tourists visit Great Smoky Mountains National Park each year, and human nature hasn't changed. What has changed is the way the Park Service manages garbage, bears, and above all, the public, to minimize dangerous interactions between the human and ursine species. "The hardest thing here is educating the people," says Bill Stiver, Park wildlife biologist. "When you have over 10 million visitors, and 90 percent are doing the right thing, you still have a million people doing the wrong thing."

The wrong thing in most instances is people not taking care of their food and garbage. Fortunately, however, "bears don't just pop out of the woods one day and say, hey, I want to be a nuisance bear," Stiver says. In the Park, they will first begin plundering people food in a campground or picnic area at night while people are sleeping or away from the site. At this point, Park managers capture and release these bears on site. "We set up a culvert trap and capture the animal, immobilizing it and doing a workup." A workup may involve removing a nonessential tooth, ear tagging, or tattooing. "We have a fair amount of success putting the fear of people back in them," he says.

This technique, however, doesn't work with daytime-habituated animals, which tend to be bolder and less trainable, and have to be relocated long distances. "We have an agreement with TWRA and the Cherokee National Forest to move bears out of the Park," Stiver says. However, bears have strong homing instincts, and they try to return to their territory and are sometimes hit by cars.

But night-active bears that are captured and released, and day-active bears that are relocated, have it easy compared with bears that exhibit threatening behavior toward people, even if it's not the bears' fault.

One of the most common, and dangerous, mistakes visitors make is to crowd bears, especially in areas like Cades Cove, where large numbers of tourists congregate. "In summer 2000, a boy got too close to a bear, and it lunged out and bit him, but the family never reported it; another individual did," Stiver says. "We had to euthanize the bear and send it off to evaluate it for rabies." The National Park Service estimates that wild bears live 23 percent longer than panhandlers, so the adages the Park is promoting through bumper stickers are only too true: A fed bear is a dead bear. Garbage kills bears.

Within Park boundaries, the National Park Service has initiated a number of changes designed to keep bears wild. Older 32-gallon garbage cans were replaced with larger dumpsters that are bear-proof and hold a larger volume of garbage. "That has really reduced the problem," Stiver says. Park personnel are also posting signs in picnic areas reminding visitors not to leave food on tables and to dispose of garbage in the bear-proof containers.

In the back country, the National Park Service has installed cables for hanging food and packs at campsites and most shelters. Where cables are not present, hikers are advised to hoist their food supplies at least 10 feet off the ground and four feet from the nearest tree and keep food preparation areas at a good distance from sleeping areas.

Close Encounters
Considering the high population of bears in the Park and the number of visitors, the low numbers of nuisance bears is remarkable. In fact, problems have decreased rather than increased in the last 10 years thanks to pioneering management techniques, says Joe Clark, laboratory field director of the Southern Appalachian Field Laboratory. "Understanding reproductive rates, mast failures, and things bears do in terms of moving out of Park boundaries-those concepts were developed in the Smokies," he says.

Consider that in 2000, the National Park Service reported that only six bears had to be moved out of the Park, and six night-active bears were captured and released on site. In all, 18 bears were handled 19 times. Only one bear had to be euthanized for what amounted to human error-the boy who came too close to a bear and was bitten.

Yet, 2000 was marred by an extraordinary tragedy: the fatal mauling in May of a 52-year-old woman at the intersection of the Goshen Prong and Little River trails by an adult female and her female yearling cub. This is the only known fatal attack by black bears in any national park in the United States. Nevertheless, a board of inquiry was formed to make recommendations to improve the overall bear management program. "One of the things we've done is to work with Steve Herrero, the foremost expert on bear attacks, to update the information on our trail map for backcountry hikers, our black bear flier, and our Web page," Stiver says. The information found on map, flier, and Web page <http://www.nps.gov/grsm/index.htm> explains in detail what to do if you encounter a bear. The trail maps are available at the visitor centers and backcountry permit stations. The black bear flier is available at visitor centers.

Contact with humans and their food within Park boundaries, however, is only part of the problem. On the western boundary of the Park, which is primarily private property, population growth and increased commercial and residential development are increasing the likelihood of human contact with bears. In the gateway community of Gatlinburg, for example, bears are a strong drawing card for local businesses. Until recently, restaurants would leave dumpsters open or intentionally feed bears to afford diners closeup views. "It was also legal for residents to intentionally feed bears for viewing opportunities," Stiver says. In addition, hunting is allowed outside the Park boundary, and hunters are legally allowed to bait bears with food until 10 days before the opening of hunting season.

In June 2000, however, the city passed an ordinance requiring mandatory animal-resistant containers in areas that border the Park, Stiver says. And the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Commission recently changed its policy to make it illegal to intentionally feed bears in that same area.

Bear Country
Ursus americanus has inhabited North America since the late Pliocene era 5 million years ago, predating humans on this continent by some 4,960,00 years, and it has few natural enemies apart from other bears. Today, the black bear's greatest enemy-outside of habitat destruction and fragmentation-is a human who feeds it. While Great Smoky Mountains National Park's bear management program is one of the most successful in the United States, a growing human population, commercial and residential development, and tourism make it impossible to completely eliminate close encounters with bears. Occasionally, an encounter will turn ugly. But in the vast majority of cases, it's the bear's life that is in jeopardy.

It's important to keep the risk of bear encounters in perspective, Clark says. "A person is in more danger driving to and from the Park than from anything in the Park. And compared with dying from a bee sting or getting struck by lightning, the risk of encountering a bear is small. The legacy the black bear restores to our ecosystem is great."

For further information, contact Bill Stiver, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, <http://www.nps.gov/grsm/> 107 Park Headquarters Road, Gatlinburg, TN 37738, or call 865-436-1251.