Black bears are moving into the neighborhood. How do we coexist?

[THEME MUSIC] FLORA LICHTMAN: Hey, it’s Flora Lichtman, and you’re listening to Science Friday.

Black bears have been popping up in unexpected places– raiding the backyard grill–

SPEAKER: He munching. Oh, is that barbecue sauce he’s eating?

FLORA LICHTMAN: –breaking into cars–

SPEAKER: Oh, my God. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh.

FLORA LICHTMAN: –nursing their cubs on someone’s patio furniture.

SPEAKER: Mama has found her favorite chair. Has her foot up. Babies in her lap nursing. Is this not adorable?

FLORA LICHTMAN: One of the relatively new places where these encounters are happening is in the Southern US. After being hunted nearly to extinction, black bear populations are rebounding there, and bear territory is expanding to include people’s backyards.

Cassandra Stephenson a reporter for the Tennessee Lookout, based in Nashville, reported on how this is playing out in the States along the Lower Mississippi River, like Tennessee, Missouri, and Arkansas, where black bears are becoming more and more common.

Cassandra, welcome to Science Friday.

CASSANDRA STEPHENSON: Thank you for having me.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Thanks for being here. Cassandra, how did you get turned on to this story?

CASSANDRA STEPHENSON: I came across a lot of social media chatter in West Tennessee, reporting different black bear sightings in places where people didn’t typically expect to see black bears. In Tennessee, they’re really common in the Eastern and more mountainous portion of the state. But people were posting pictures of black bears munching on some corn in a cornfield, running through a golf course, caught on Ring cameras in people’s backyards.

So I started looking into why the bears were being seen in the Western portion of the state, and found that that’s actually their historic habitat. They were abundant throughout the state of Tennessee and many other states in the Southeast, before overhunting and habitat destruction reduced their numbers drastically.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yeah, so what is the history of bears in this region?

CASSANDRA STEPHENSON: So bears were abundant in this region back before settlement, basically. And as people settled in the Lower Mississippi River basin, some of their habitat was changed, destroyed, and their population numbers dropped significantly. Sometimes, to the point where they were almost non-existent in certain states.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Really?

CASSANDRA STEPHENSON: Yeah, I think, Missouri, in the 1890s, thought that they might have been completely extirpated, meaning just kind of hunted out of existence in that state.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So now, obviously, we have all these sightings. What has happened to the population since, and what helped them rebound?

CASSANDRA STEPHENSON: It kind of depends by state. But in the 1930s through 1960s, there were a lot of efforts to regulate hunting more. A lot of states actually stopped bear hunting for a period of time. In some states, like Mississippi, it hasn’t started back up again. And then, in some cases, states tried to boost their population by bringing in bears from Canada or Minnesota.

FLORA LICHTMAN: How did that go?

CASSANDRA STEPHENSON: It didn’t really work out too well. There was a study a few years ago that showed that there’s still some DNA evidence that maybe some bears in Louisiana might have some of the DNA of some of the bears that were brought in, literally trucked in, from those other places. But newspaper clippings from around the 1950s and ’60s when that happened so that quite a few of those bears were killed or died or wandered away, because bears have really expansive home ranges.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So, Cassandra, what’s your take home from this reporting? Does this feel like with growing populations, there’s a new problem to solve? Or how are you thinking about it?

CASSANDRA STEPHENSON: Yeah, in talking to a lot of the state wildlife agencies, they kind of looked at this as one, a sort of success in that these animals that were greatly overhunted, their populations are coming back. But they also encouraged people to start thinking as though bears are already their neighbors, because it will be a bit of an adjustment for people to have bears living alongside them.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Absolutely. Cassandra, thank you for walking us through this story.

CASSANDRA STEPHENSON: Yeah, absolutely. Happy to.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Cassandra Stephenson, reporter for the Tennessee Lookout. She reported this story in collaboration with the Mississippi River Basin AG & Water Desk. After the break, as black bears move in, can we learn to get along? Don’t go away.

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This bear boom isn’t just happening in the Southeast. There are an estimated 20,000 black bears in Pennsylvania, 24,000 in Wisconsin, and maybe, as many as 70,000 in California. And as we’ve been talking about, living with black bears is complicated. They’re huge, they’re hungry, and they really don’t care about your hostas.

So as their populations increase and they get more comfortable around us, how do we coexist? Here with me now is Dr. Nyeema Harris. She’s a wildlife biologist, carnivore ecologist, and expert on human wildlife interactions at Yale University.

Nyeema, welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for being here.

NYEEMA HARRIS: Well, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate the invitation.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So these bear videos are all over my algorithm. Is this a big issue in your world, in the wildlife ecology world?

NYEEMA HARRIS: Absolutely. There’s an increase in wildlife encounters with all types of species, including black bear. And people are concerned about wildlife. People are concerned about their pets and their groceries and their children. And so as we’re seeing more and more wildlife, including black bears, in our neighborhoods, it raises the question of both why is this happening, and what do I do?

FLORA LICHTMAN: Why is it happening?

NYEEMA HARRIS: Black bear populations are increasing. We already know this. And like any population, there’s variation in individuals. There’s going to be some individuals that are shy and timid and that we don’t see. But then there are individuals that become acclimated, that become habituated, that become bolder. And those bold individuals are the ones that create our worry because they’re coming closer and closer to us, and seem to be kind of fearless. And so we’re worried about what’s going to happen and what are they going to do next.

FLORA LICHTMAN: OK, so what should we do? Are there best practices for living near black bears, besides locking away your trash?

NYEEMA HARRIS: Well, I’m glad you mentioned trash because that ends up being one of the primary drivers. The reality is that every place that we are is a shared resource. We are in a shared landscape. So first, we have to accept that we are making choices about where we live, about the habitats that are around us.

How close do our homes abut natural forested areas or highly vegetated areas, for example? How are we manicuring our lawns? How are we taking care of the vegetation around us? But then, also, how are we managing our trash?

And so, you have your birthday party, and you have leftover cake, and you throw it in the garbage can. Are those garbage cans secure? Are they locked? It’s going to be a lure.

Bird feeders, dog foods. Those are all–

FLORA LICHTMAN: Bird feeders? Oh, this audience is going to go wild, Nyeema. Are you telling us we can’t have bird feeders?

NYEEMA HARRIS: I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s an attractant. It’s attracting everything, from birds to mice to raccoons to even bears. Because bears are omnivores. They are eating seeds. They are eating grains. And so, yes, it ends up being an attractant.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I wanted to ask you about that because in children’s books, anyway, the only food bears eat are like blueberries and fish.

NYEEMA HARRIS: And honey.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And honey, of course. And honey. What do black bears actually eat?

NYEEMA HARRIS: So it’s very interesting because we classify animals in lots of different ways. Sometimes, it’s taxonomically based on their morphology. And so bears are a part of order carnivora. So they are absolutely, carnivores. And additionally, we classify animals based on behavioral characteristics. Are they diurnal or nocturnal?

We classify animals based on their diet. So bears, even though they’re taxonomically morphometrically carnivores, they have large canines, for example, they are omnivores. So they are eating both plant material, things like berries and seeds, but they’re, also, eating meat.

And so they’re eating carrion, for example, dead stuff, which is really helpful for nutrient cycling and cleaning up trash and things that are decaying around us. So they play a really important ecosystem role from that perspective. Because they are eating seeds and berries and plant materials, they’re really important seed dispersers. And so that means they’re helping to reforest and aid in plant diversity.

But then, they’re also eating insects, things like termites and different types of bugs. And so they’re a part of insect control. So as much as we are concerned about the growth of population of black bears, we also have to remember that they are playing important ecosystem functions and roles. So we do want them to be around.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Do they hunt animals?

NYEEMA HARRIS: So some of them do. So unlike species like a grizzly bear, that might be a more active hunter, black bears are kind of clumsy and a little bit sloppy in their strategy around hunting. But sometimes, they do take fawns, so they take deer fawns. And so they’re not a primary apex predator in most systems, but they do hunt.

FLORA LICHTMAN: They hunt fawns, yeah.

NYEEMA HARRIS: Yeah.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I mean, you kind of alluded to this, but what’s their reputation in the bear family tree? Like, are they the goofy cousin?

NYEEMA HARRIS: Yeah, maybe a distant relative that we may not want to claim so much. They are not the most ferocious. They’re not extremely aggressive, but they’re big. They’re big and clunky. And I think most people, when they look at bears, they’re like, oh, they’re really cute. And they are, right? They’re kind of cute, and I think that creates a little bit of tension because you have some members of the community that are just kind of annoyed or terrified and don’t want them close, but then you have a subset of the population that are excited about seeing bears and want them to come. And they’re like, oh, the bear comes to my backyard at 6:00 PM every night. Let’s have a watch party. And people are excited about these encounters.

But then, it also means that we’re making mistakes. And we’re deliberately trying to get closer and closer and take our selfies or do all types of inappropriate human behavior. And so we have to have a complementary and a consistent strategy that we want wild animals to stay wild. We do not want to alter their behavior for them to become habituated, because ultimately that’s going to lead to conflict.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I mean, is it inevitable that they’re going to become habituated? Let’s think about raccoons and squirrels and many other animals that live with us. Do you feel like there’s a way around this?

NYEEMA HARRIS: Oh, goodness. I hope 50 years from now, we’re not thinking about the squirrel and the black bear in the same way. I really hope that that’s not the case.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Wait, why?

NYEEMA HARRIS: Because of, again, going back to the ecosystem role. The role that a squirrel plays in the system versus the role that a black bear plays in the system is very different. We also want these large carnivores to have wide home ranges.

I mentioned the important role about them being seed dispersers. That means we need them to disperse. We need them to move. We need them to go places. So we don’t want them habituated in a way of their territory becoming smaller and smaller, and they’re just hanging out in our backyard, and now, they’re friends with our dog. We do not want that to be happening. We don’t want–

FLORA LICHTMAN: Social media does want that to be happening, but I hear you.

NYEEMA HARRIS: Oh, please, no. Please, no.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I hear you. I mean, this is a tricky question with, maybe, no scientific answer, but do we have any sense of how black bears perceive us? Are we scary? Are we food? What are we to them?

NYEEMA HARRIS: Yeah, I love that question because I just reflect on the number of black bear encounters that I’ve had. And I think other people can testify to similar experiences of us startling them, of we’re on the trail or we’re out in the woods, and they come across us. And they’re like, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, what is this thing?

And oftentimes, their response isn’t attack. Their response isn’t even to go up on hind legs. Oftentimes, their response is moving and backing away and trying to get further and further away from us. So the reality is that we come with some risk. Bears are certainly hunted in certain populations, and so they’re aware of us as potential hunters in the ecosystem. So there is absolutely, a reason to be fearful of us.

Sometimes, we’re walking with our German shepherds or our Dobermans or our pitbulls. Another reason to be afraid of us. So there is definitely a weariness that comes with the encounters, I think, on both sides of the equation.

There’s also an acknowledgment and strategies of what people are now doing to try to promote aversive behavior, so aversive conditioning, right? The idea of OK, so if you do encounter a bear and you don’t want them there, what do you do? They’re actually very smart from the perspective of learned behavior.

So if they come into your backyard and they get a easy snack, they have memory, and they can do mind maps. So they know, OK, 7648 Johnson Street– sorry, if that’s someone’s address– they know that they can go there and get an easy snack.

FLORA LICHTMAN: They remember where the buffet is.

NYEEMA HARRIS: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But we can do some adverse conditioning, whether it’s again, the dogs that are barking or chasing. Some people are chasing with drones, now. So there’s these types of hazing practices, if you will, that teach the animal, that teach the black bear, you’re going to have a bad experience, learn from this experience, and go someplace else.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Best done by a professional, I’m guessing.

NYEEMA HARRIS: Correct.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yeah, yeah. I know you don’t just study black bears, but you work all over the world studying carnivores. Snow leopards in Central Asia. Lions in West Africa. Are there lessons that you take from these other places that live with big carnivores that could apply here?

NYEEMA HARRIS: Yeah, the reality is that all of these places, whether we’re talking about jaguars in Mexico or lions in West Africa, or snow leopards in Kyrgyzstan, or coyotes and black bears in Detroit, there is a common thread that every place, these communities that are living with these large carnivores, have some unique challenges that they’re facing. And the strategies that they implement has to be effective, has to be socially and culturally acceptable. And so there are shared lessons.

And fundamentally, it is grounded in some amount of tolerance. There is an awareness that living close to these carnivores comes with a certain cost, but also comes with a certain reward. So tolerance ends up being a fundamental theme across these different cultures and these different places.

But then, also, what does coexistence actually mean? How do we define it? What are the metrics that we use to say that we are successfully coexisting with wildlife?

The reality is it doesn’t mean that there’s no loss. It doesn’t mean that there’s no conflict. It means that the conflict is manageable, and that we can tolerate the extent of the loss that we’re experiencing.

FLORA LICHTMAN: That’s really helpful. That’s a really helpful framework. Dr. Nyeema Harris, Associate Professor of Wildlife and Land Conservation at Yale University. Thank you for joining us today.

NYEEMA HARRIS: Thanks for having me.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And we want to hear from you. Have you had a surprising black bear encounter? Was one sitting on your outdoor couch, looking ready for a margarita? Did it take a dip in your hot tub? Did you scare each other in the woods?

Call us with your best black bear story. 877-4-SCI-FRI is our number. 877-4-SCI-FRI.

This episode was produced by Kathleen Davis. And if it made you as hungry as a bear for more Science Friday, try us on social media at SciFri on all the platforms. We will fit right in with your black bear reels. We’ll catch you next time. Thank you for listening. I’m Flora Lichtman.

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