Hi, everyone. Welcome. My name is Angela Mills. I work for the town of Amherst. I'm one of your community participation officers, and I'm also the executive assistant to Paul Backelman, our town manager. I want to welcome everyone here tonight. It's not quite 6.30, so we're going to give it just a minute and a half more before we get rolling. I did want to let everyone know that this meeting is being recorded, and we have a framework that we'll review with you, and there will be plenty of time for lots of questions and lots of answers from the experts. So welcome, everyone. We're just going to wait until 6.30 happens on my computer screen, and then we will get rolling. So thanks for being with us. Welcome once again to our first ever web banner. That's from Brianna Sunred, and thanks again for being with us. Are those Amherst bears behind you? I took them from the state website, I think. I think these are Dave's bears. It looked familiar. I think those are our old photographer, Bill Byrne, I think, took those photos. I don't know where. You don't know where there's a bear? Well, where he took the photos. I have a hand raised over in the other room. We're doing questions and answers at the end. Mary Anderson, but welcome. Thanks for being with us. Thank you. The hand is on Dave. Watch out. We're up to 32 attendees. I'm kind of excited. Everybody loves bears. We will officially start this at 6.30. I want to welcome everyone again. It's nice of you to be with us. All things black bear related. Although I did learn that Dave's an expert on all fur-bearing mammals. Yes, not only black bears, but coyotes, beavers, bobcats, kind of you name it. I'm responsible for as well. Nice. All right. So welcome everyone. It's officially 6.30. Thanks for being with us tonight. All things bear related here in the town of Amherst. My name is Angela Mills. I'm one of your community participation officers. I'm also Paul's executive assistant here in town hall. And tonight we're talking about bears. And this is being recorded so that we can upload it later to the YouTube channel. We have experts with us. So the framework for this evening will do quick introductions. And then we will watch a presentation from Dave Waddles from the state of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And then we will have time for questions and answers. So without further ado, Carol Hubburn, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure. I'm the town's animal control officer. I've been here approximately, probably 20 and a half years now. I grew up in South Dakota and was around many animals. The only thing that wasn't around was bears. But everything else I know, that's all I know actually is animals. I don't know much about people. But my job here is just to keep peace. Excellent. Counselor Lopes, do you want to say hello to everyone? Hi, everyone. I just want to thank Master of Ceremony Angela Mills and, well, life experts, Carol Hubburn and Dave Waddles, Paul Bachman, who I think may have been looking forward to this even more than myself. And everyone else, of course, tuning in. And yeah, so I have been fortunate enough to have been visited by the downtown bears. And while it was definitely one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had. And my first time seeing bears in person. So it was amazing. And I know that there are others that share that experience and the feelings around it. I would also like to thank a group of District 4 residents who have shared their concerns and fears about walking out and having such close-quartered experiences with bears, especially in regards to pets and young children. So I'm really looking forward to learning best practices for interacting or not with all of you from the experts this evening. So thank you. Thanks for making this, helping me make this happen. And thanks for being with us tonight. Paul, did you want to say hello to everyone? Yeah, I thank everybody for being here, Dave and Carol. Councilor Lopes is right. I'm really excited about this. I'm going to hit my camera off so everybody can focus on the speakers. So thanks for organizing this, Angela and Councilor Lopes. And without further ado, our guest of honor this evening, Dave. Dave, tell us a little bit about yourself and then feel free to roll right into your presentation. Okay. Hi, everyone. My name is Dave Waddles. I am the Black Bear and Fur Bearer biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. I've been in the position for about five and a half years now. Prior to that, I was a grad student and postdoc at UMass. So I'm very familiar with Amherst in the surrounding area. I did my graduate work studying moose in Massachusetts and while I was there, I began working with the state to put satellite tracking collars on bears that mass wildlife already had collared with conventional radio collars. So I worked with bears for seven or eight years before in Massachusetts before I came to my position here. With that, I will get started. So I'm going to start tonight by talking basically about general Black Bear ecology and biology and what we know about the population here in Massachusetts and then transition into preventing conflict with bears, which ends up being probably preventing conflict with bears in these other species that I'm responsible for ends up being the vast majority of my job. So just so we know what we're talking about, we're talking about Black Bears. That's the only bear that we have in the eastern United States. Adult males can be quite large. It's pretty easy for a male to be 400 pounds by four years of age. And so we definitely have many male Black Bears that are over 450 pounds in Massachusetts. Adult females are considerably smaller. They can range anywhere from 140 for an adult female to over 300 pounds. 300 pounds is really the extreme and would be a bear that's really getting a lot of human associated foods, both bird feeders and other things, but as well as corn. And there's also a big difference between rural and suburban bears that 140, 160 pound female is going to be a rural bear, particularly in the hill towns. And they're just smaller because they're pretty much reliant on only natural foods. But for a lot of the bears that we work with in the collaring study I'm talking about the bear that you see in the lower left here, 210 to 225 pounds for an adult female. Let's talk about the two-year life cycle or breeding cycle of bears. This time of year in the spring is when yearlings, so one-year-old bears, so those three cubs that you've been seeing in town for the past year, they disperse. So sometime in the next month or so they're going to disperse and they're going to be on their own for the rest of their lives. They disperse just prior to the breeding season. So the breeding or mating season for bears is going on now but really peaks in June and goes into July. And this is when we tend to see the greatest amount of bear activity. Males are covering enormous amounts of ground to try to interact with and mate with as many females as they can. Those young bears are moving around in they're on their own for the first time. So think of them as teenagers who are suddenly kicked out and going to college. So lots and lots of bear activity and we tend to see a peak in conflict every year in June. So in the mating season for bears when the the egg is fertilized it begins to develop but then the the pregnancy pauses and basically it's because the egg doesn't implant in the uterus. It remains floating and so for a period of time there's bears have something that's called delayed implantation. So for the rest of the summer and into the fall that female is she's impregnated and she has fertilized eggs in her but she's not the pregnancy is not developing. She's alone in finding food for this this period of time. Around November 1st and it's pretty much like clockwork plus or minus a week every year all the pregnant females enter the den. Something changes hormonally and physiologically with them and it's this time that the egg the fertilized egg implants in the uterine wall and the pregnancy begins to develop. The fetus develops over the next couple months in the den and then the cubs are born in the den in mid-January and early February. They're about a pound their eyes are closed they don't have much fur and basically they're solely dependent on mom's mom's milk for them to grow and develop over the next couple months. So she'll nurse them she's she's awake quite a lot of the time in the den in the winter and she's nursing the cubs and they go from one pound to up to six or eight pounds by the time they're they're leaving the den. Those pregnant females when newborn comes typically emerge around April 1st again plus or minus a week or so and that's pretty consistent every year. For the next seven or eight months she has those newborn cubs with her so she is providing them milk still but she's also introducing natural foods to them showing them how to be bears where to find foods how to avoid trouble how to cross roads and other things. By late summer they're weaned so they're no longer receiving milk from her and then they will enter the den sometime typically after the pregnant females it can be anywhere from early to mid-November into December January or not at all as you guys saw last winter in Amherst. If they do den the sow in those yearling cubs one-year-old cubs den together and they tend to emerge a little bit earlier mid-February mid-March depending on conditions and then they'll be acted together as a family again for the next couple months before we hit this time of year again when they disperse and we enter the breeding season again so that's a two-year cycle you know so she's giving a sow is giving birth to cubs every other year and she keeps those cubs with her for a little over a year. When we talk about bear diet and habitat use so bears are opportunistic omnivores this means basically a bear will eat anything so they'll eat both plants and and meat batter but 99% of their their diet is vegetarian is plant-based so that means in the spring that they're heavily reliant on the first emergent loss of vegetation and so this is typically around wetlands skunk cabbage is an extremely important overwintering food for them but also in the spring but they will also take advantage of nuts acorns hickory nuts beach nuts that have fell in the fall and are still available on the ground after the winter and they will opportunistically take on take advantage of both carrion and then deer fawns after they're born in the spring but they're not chasing down prey like a bobcat would or a fish or something they're not that type of of a predator this type of year if you look around food this time of year food is pretty scarce there's not a lot of natural food that vegetation isn't very nutritious so bears are actually still losing weight at this time of year and so we do tend to see heavy use of human associated foods bird feeders garbage and other foods in the spring pretty much throughout the year you're going to find bears where they can find food seasonally as it changes and so in spring habitat use in natural areas tends to be wetland dominated as the season evolves and progresses different foods become available bears shift their diet and their habitat used to take advantage of those so their summer diet is going to consist of insect nests so ant bee and lost nests the larva grubs the honey they'll basically eat everything in those nests dig them out of logs and stumps and out of the ground soft mass so soft massed is is berries and fruits so they'll go right through the summer as different fruits are available so strawberries raspberries blueberries blackberries cherries grapes they'll use them all throughout the summer and this is a really important natural food source for them and this is where they start to go from that energy deficit to a surplus again unfortunately they will also take advantage of crops particularly corn and apples and bears can really do quite a lot of damage in cornfields they'll go into cornfields and they'll just kind of park there and they just flat in large areas of cornfield and and really can cost quite a lot of damage for farmers in the summers we tend to find bears in upland forest uh logged areas um log areas are important because of the the downed trees and in logs that's great places for those those insects the ants and wasps and bees to nest um so they'll dig in the logs for those as they rot but also the open forest allows the berry crops to to grow for a period of years and so bears will concentrate these areas still in wetlands and then fields in orchards as we move from late summer and into fall bears enter a state that's called hyperphagia this is basically a compulsion for them to start eating as much as possible to start packing on the fat reserves that they need to survive the winter in hibernation when they won't eat at all and so you may have seen brown bears that congregate on salmon runs and things this is them um uh where they're just gluttonous you know eating salmon after salmon after salmon this is that hyperphagia for for our bears we don't have that kind of salmon run or fish run so they're relying on different foods it can be unfortunately crops again um but the big natural food is the hardmast and so hardmast is acorns beech nuts and hickory nuts with acorns and beech nuts certainly being favored over hickory nuts and they'll definitely take advantage of deer carcasses um from the hunting season as well they tend to be found in upland forest fields and orchards so when new bears hibernate we talked about this a little bit before um the pregnant females like I said end of October early November is when they're gonna enter the den males in those females with one-year-old cubs November December later or not at all the variability of when these other bears enter the den is pretty much caused by food availability and weather and it's not weather in terms of the cold a bear has you know a better winter coat than most of the the deer the coyote these other animals that are active all winter plus a a thick layer of fat so they can deal with the cold in winter it but snow on the ground ice on the ground can prevent them from accessing acorns or other foods again being vegetarian so it's that lack of food that causes them to go to the den if food is scarce they tended then earlier there's an exception in this if they haven't gained the fat they need to survive hibernation then they may not then they'll kind of try to keep eating and finding food until they they do have enough fat to survive so they may actually stay later if food is scarce if it's abundant they'll then then later as well or potentially not at all if there's a rich steady food source all winter unfortunately that steady food source tends to be human associated foods bird feeders now it like your bears we've seen this before in Amherst we've seen it before in Northampton and other places where bears remain active all winter and it's because bird feeders are providing basically a year-round food source that wouldn't be there otherwise so it kind of precludes that need to den when they're in the den they're in there for four to five months and they don't eat they don't drink and they don't excrete waste so their metabolism really decreases but they're not true hibernators so they can wake up just like that and become active immediately why do they hibernate I started talking about this it's to cope with that it's an adaptation to cope with that seasonal food shortage so this means that a bear has to gain all the calories all the fat they need to survive winter in that short period that they're active and this means that they're evolutionarily adapted to search for calorie-rich foods and concentrated food sources this is basically just what a bear is and unfortunately we in modern society readily provide these around our homes communities and neighborhoods and this is what drives conflict it's not that these are bad bears that are doing this it's simply a bear being a bear and taking advantage of what's available so this is our current bear range in massachusetts all of the well I should say historically we had black bears all the way to the coast this was in pre-European colonization times when massachusetts with almost 100 forest when european colonists came they cut down the forest and turned it into farmland so the loss of habitat and as well animals were hunted in an unregulated fashion fish and wildlife agencies obviously didn't exist at that time so animals could be hunted year-round and for bears they were hunted for food their fur for their fat as well as pests predators in threats potential threats to people and so that bear population that once existed all the way to the state ended up being just a small remnant population in the northern berkshires and the population that we have now is the slow expansion and growth of that population over time as forests have grown back our agency came to being and we regulated hunting we still have a hunting season in massachusetts but it's controlled as to when it happens and in the number of animals that can be taken and it's allowed to grow through the population and our population is continuing to grow everywhere in the gray blue we have here are places where we have established males and females so there's active reproduction there's cubs being produced here this brown area is kind of our expanding range in that area it's predominantly males that are dispersing from their their mother's range trying to find a territory for their own but we are in recent years getting more and more reports of females with cubs in some of these areas so that progression to the east is still continual one of the best ways to to see the growth of the bear population over time is to look at where bears have been taken in our hunting season if we go back to 1980 there were only 10 bears taken in the entire state in the hunting season all around that remnant population in northern berkshires 10 years later as our population had grown it's expanded throughout most of the northern berkshires bears have now crossed the mass pike and are probably entering into connecticut crossed the connecticut river and moving into the east and you can see over time as more bears are being taken the distribution of where bears are being taken is increasing and you're now taking five six bears of the individual towns we've already taken our first bear east of the connecticut river at this point and now it's expanding further into east so what was happening 30 years before and western mass is now starting to happen in central massachusetts as well what we see in 2016 is that there is a very high number of bears being taken along the connecticut border 14 17 10 9 and individual towns remember bears from massachusetts colonized connecticut about 35 years before this 30 35 years before this they don't have a hunting season so their population has grown unchecked since then and there's now very high densities of bears in connecticut and now we're starting to see kind of a surplus of bears along our connecticut along the connecticut border as a result of that another thing that they're seeing in connecticut is that they're experiencing a lot of more severe conflict in what we see in massachusetts um a couple years ago they had over 40 home entries by bears in the state whereas we have no more than two or three per year in all of massachusetts so real differences based on how bears are being managed in the state but you see this continued progression of where bears are and now the increase in the number of bears east of the river and so this is now in our modern hunting framework uh where we've had taken and so you can see this shows the relative longevity of when we've had bears in the state and so and also the higher densities west of the river but we're now starting to get bears and more bears in central massachusetts in in reached a point where the population is starting to increase much more rapidly in central mass as well this is the bear number of bears taken in the hunting season over the years um this generally tracks the increase in bears throughout the state there are differences in the length in the season over time we've increased the length in the season over time as the bear population has grown so it's not a perfect relationship but this shows the trend of increase in the population and now we're seeing that same pattern east of the connecticut rivers we're just at a lag of about 20 or 30 years behind where it is west of the connecticut river so that's one way we have an idea of what's happening with the number of bears and where they're found in massachusetts another way is looking at where calls come in to either us or to the environmental police every single call through the environmental police is recorded and so this gives a good distribution of where calls are coming from but also it doesn't necessarily mean give any information as to the relative relative number of bears in an area so for example there was one bear that was being a nuisance bear in fitchburg a couple of years ago was approaching people and really causing issues and a number of calls came into them as a result so these are different ways we can track um what's happening with the population and come up with what's going on with our bear range but we want to have more information in in terms of how we manage our population and so as a biologist if i know the population size at one period in time i want to predict what the population is going to be in the future in order to do that i need lots of pieces of information as all these things are pieces of information that i need so i need information on how many cubs there are now how many yearlings there are now two miles adults females and males what's their survival rates to the next year so how many would that produce how many cubs are they going to produce and if i have all these pieces of information i can get an idea of what the population is going to be in the future but we have to try to get this information in order to do this and to do this mass wildlife along with researchers at UMass have been collaring and tracking black bears in the state since the 1980s it's one of the longest term studies anywhere in the country as i said the main means of us getting this information is by putting tracking collars on bears and then monitoring their survival and cub production over time every year we trap new bears and so we're doing that this time of year and we use these barrel trap to do so so this is two and a half 55 gallon drums welded together there's a bait bag in the far end of the trap the bear crawls in and even this big bear will squeeze himself into that trap they pull the bait bag and the door closes behind them and now we can when we check the bear the trap the next day we'll have this bear inside so we can then apply tranquilizer with the door closed and then pull out the bear and that's how we now have a new bear that we can add into our study on the right you can also see occasionally we take advantage of when a bear is a female with cubs happens to be in a tree in a more developed area that's actually how we got one of our collared bears in in Amherst a number of years ago now and so that's how we can we can take advantage of and get bears collared in places we might not trap otherwise once the bear is tranquilized we pull it out of the trap and we can begin to work it up all the bears get your tags with a unique number so that way if they're taken in the hunting season they're involved in a vehicle collision a bear leaves Massachusetts and goes up to New Hampshire and is involved in a vehicle collision we'll have that information on what the origin of that bear is and all of our females now are getting tracking collars so these collars allow us to monitor her survival from the time she's trapped until the next time we handle her in the den that winter and most of our collars now are equipped with GPS units and so basically they take a GPS fix every 45 minutes so we get really detailed information on what these bears are doing what habitats they're using how often they're close to houses where they're crossing roads and moving across the landscape pretty much 24 hours a day seven days a week so as I said those collared bears in right now we have 34 collared females we track them to their dens each winter and to to assess the their cub production and so here's a variety of different den types that are common in Massachusetts in the upper left you can see a rock cave this actually isn't very common because it's not something that's readily available to bears really in most places but often there can be a hollow up in a tree or at the base of a tree they'll then in next to or underneath the root mass from overturned trees or just in dense briar and brush or a log pile or in a burrow on a ground underneath the log or underneath the stump and so we really like these burrow dens because there's a really good chance we're going to capture the bear as I mentioned before they're just sleeping so if we weren't we're going to do this capture work we're talking and breaking sticks and things as we're going in the bear is going to wake up and she's going to run off and it kind of ruins our opportunity to do the work we need to so we sneak in as quietly as we can and we try to apply the tranquilizer with us up from a syringe on the end of a long pole she goes to sleep right in the den and then we can work her up we pull her out at that point we assess her condition refit or replace her collar as needed and just record biological information half of our females every year are pregnant and so once she's immobilized the the cub these cubs are small enough that they can be handled awake and so we determine how many cubs she gave birth to what the sex of the cubs is we weigh the cubs and assess their condition and so there's one of those pieces of information we got to model the population is is how many cubs she produces once we've done all the handling we need to we put mom back in the den we tuck the cubs right in next to her we cover some brush over that you can see these pine boughs behind this person those are going to go over the opening in the den she wakes up recovers from the tranquilizer right in the den and keeps taking care of the cubs they stay in the den for another month or so before emerging and and not really knowing anything happens we'll track that female and those cubs throughout the next year if she were to die in that period well that's a piece of information was the cause of her mortality if not we'll attempt to capture her again the following winter if we can successfully immobilize her then one at a time we can immobilize those one-year-old cubs they're going to be anywhere from 40 to 100 or more pounds depending on where they live you know it's going to be a 40 pound bear 50 pound bear in a more forested natural area 70 80 100 pounds in a suburban or urban area all those those cubs get ear tags just like mom and then you can see them lower right the young female gets an expandable collar this allows us the expandable collar allow accommodates her growth over the next year she'll then by herself the next winter she'll get a full-size collar at that point and we'll be able to track her survival as a one-year-old her survival moving forward for her entire life when does she have her first cubs how many cubs does she have throughout her life so by doing this work we can get lots of information in a really complete picture as to what's happening with our bear population here's an example of a family of bears that we collared and handled one year so this is the mom she happens to be a four-year-old female at this point this is her first litter and she actually successfully raised her first litter a male and a female the male has ear tags as you see and the female got an expandable collar we just handled that the female did by herself for the first time this winter and she dend right next to the Worcester airport so she's now got a satellite tracking collar on her and it'll be interesting to see her interaction with Worcester in some of its suburbs in the coming years and by doing this study over a very long period of time we have a lot of information on survival rates for bears and their causes of mortality so we know that the adult female survival rate is very high and this is the number one factor that's going to determine whether you have an increasing population as we do you have a stable population or a decreasing population we have information on age of first reproduction and so historically we would have said that it's three or four in earlier and developed areas now almost every single one of our bears we have more bears collared in suburban areas than in rural areas they're almost giving birth at three it's a very rare that we don't have one giving birth at three years old we have information on that first litter size to believe one or two cubs small cubs versus two three or four typically two to three larger cubs for a more mature female and cub survival cub survival for that first litter is much lower than subsequent litters the moms don't have the good enough body condition so they lose their milk supply halfway through the year they move around too much when the cubs are still very small taxing the cubs they don't know how to fend off males in the mating season they just they don't know how to be good mothers yet so often they'll lose that first litter often they'll be bred again that year and they'll have cubs again as a four-year-old and pretty much every other year with years where randomly they lose cubs as well they're going to produce a litter every other year for the rest of their life until they get into their upper teens and twenties and then the cub production is going to decline where they have fewer cubs and eventually no cubs and we've learned about a lot about causes and mortality we know that there's very little natural mortality in our bear population it's almost all human associated so it's either from our hunting season vehicle collisions or nuisance kills by the public and through this with all this information over time we've been able to project the growth from a an early study where they determined a population estimate in the late 80s and early 90s and we've projected the growth of our population off of that our survival rates are consistent cub productions consistent and that would mean we'd have a very high population at this point that's not really probably realistic we estimate we still probably have around four or five thousand bears but what we do know is that we do have these the demographic rates so the survival rates the birth rates etc are consistent with what they've been historically that is allowed for the growth of the population so we're still very highly confident that we have a healthy growing population still in massachusetts so i mentioned that we are now tracking bears with with gps collars so this obviously you guys are all familiar with this area um here's home right here for you um the quabbin the holiope range north hampton there i'm going to put gps data from our collared bears on here this figure actually is several years old so your bear actually doesn't show up on here there's a bunch of other new bears that we have using the area that don't show up on here each one each one of the clusters of dots of one color are an individual bear this is only females there's no males in here there's no cubs anything but this will give you an idea of what it means to have bears living amongst you because they're kind of everywhere as i said if your bear was here basically this whole area would be covered as well there are other bears living here we just don't have the data form at this time to show this so this means that bears are in neighborhoods they're next to schools next to playgrounds on a daily basis uh in in your area and in massachusetts as a whole and as a manager we can accept this um while it's not an ideal situation we can accept it because the black bears aren't inherently aggressive um towards people and this isn't unique to um to amherst what you're dealing with so this is just south to you so this is the holioc range uh west over air force base so this is uh chickapee uh holioc here and this bear went down holioc and into west springfield this bear regularly crosses the the mass pike and lug low and so same thing happening there and finally this is your bear so this is in a complete data set for your bear unfortunately there have been collar issues with with her um she has a good color on her now we're going to get good data up from her but um it uh we didn't handle her this winter so i wasn't able to download the data from from last year but this shows you you know she's active around umass campus she goes up into leverant uh just this past week she went down south along the holioc range along the fort river and over on mount warner so using this this whole area but right in and amongst town as you see here as well and obviously are well aware of so why are bears so close to us it's because this sort of habitat configuration is extremely common in massachusetts we've got very good wetland protection laws so there's buffers around wetlands there's forest blocks so there are neighborhoods and developments that interspersed with this natural habitat so what we're doing tonight and what my job is as the bear manager is try to get people who are living in these neighborhoods and they're thinking this they're thinking backyard picnic taking the kids to soccer practice or what have you but that the decisions that you make around your individual homes your neighborhoods your communities also determines how much it's this as well um this isn't your bears this actually happens to be another collared female with three yearling cubs uh in north hampton from about a decade ago my goal as the bear manager for massachusetts is to have a healthy bear population feeding on natural foods and using natural areas and living compatibly uh with the human population but there's only so much i can do to achieve that on my own i really do need your help as individuals and communities to to achieve these goals i talked about before why bears hibernate um in in kind of what the nature of a bear is they hibernate because there's no food available for them in winter and so this means they're evolutionarily adapted to try to eat as much food as possible in the seven or eight months that they're active this is just what a bear is it's it's kind of an eating machine they'll eat anything and they have this compulsion to try to eat this means that bears are going to take advantage of human associated foods year round and this is the driver of human bear comfort it's not because these are bad bears they're just taking advantage of these resources that we provide so bears and bird feeders obviously this is something that has come up in town i'll get rid of a misnomer right away there's no such thing as a bird feeder uh these are wildlife feeders um people who are putting out bird feeders are putting out food for that attracts wildlife and every one of you who does it you know this because you've got squirrels and chipmunks that you probably curse on a daily basis coming to your backyard as well but they do attract bears they attract predators who try to come and prey on those birds and squirrels and chipmunks in your backyards um but for bears this is really the main driver of human wildlife conflict with bears because it's it's the bird feeders that are really drawing bears to backyards and training them that the best place to find food is on in your backyards on your decks i circle this female this you can just see the collar underneath her chin here this is one of the females that we collared with her mother as soon and mom used the holy oak range and down into south hadley the north parts of south hadley and grand b and that's what she showed this cub to use when she was young as soon as she dispersed she moved down into the flats of south hadley grand b and down into chickpea she was one of those bears in that figure i showed you before she's eventually in backyards and she's become a renowned chicken coop raider in those areas as well so this is how it can progress from a cub to an older bear as they learn these behaviors of the young age uh this photo i actually stole this photo and caption from our old connecticut river valley uh district manager uh from a talk that he had but i've had this conversation with people many times dave you've got to come and do something about the bear that's on my back that keeps coming to my backyard and you know do you have a bird feeder yes i do well there's not really anything i can do as long as that bird feeder remains um that bear is going to keep coming back and back they're like well relocate the bear okay where do you want me to take it take it to quabin um if you look at many of these bears amherst and quabin are probably both part of their home range so we take it to quabin even if it's out of their home range more often than not they come back in a very short period of time we moved a bear out of north hampton it was actually denting underneath a deck in a condo uh complex and the woman there was actually dealing with cancer so we wanted to get her and her two over 100 pound yearlings out of there we moved them up to conway state forest which is 15 miles away they were back a day and a half later underneath the same deck so moving these bears doesn't resolve it and if you determine that this is a conflict bear we can't move that bear somewhere else in massachusetts because believe it or not there are people that live around the quabin and the bear is just going to cause conflict for them so do i shoot this bear i don't believe anyone here wants me to shoot this bear i don't want to shoot this bear and if i did shoot this bear it wouldn't solve the problem either you saw how many bears are living in and amongst you and so removing this bear doesn't do anything as long as that bird feeder remains other bears are going to do the same exact thing that this bear did as long as that remains unfortunately each time they get these food rewards they're learning they're being trained that the best place to find food is around our home's neighborhoods and decks they learn these locations they would turn time and time and time again even if it's not the same location they've got a search image that's deck i'm going to check it for food even that so that's where someone who doesn't have bird feeders out they still have bears checking out their decks and things because they're so often coming to decks for those and they won't remove they won't end as i said if the bird feeders aren't removed so in terms of bear management there's no question that bears and bird feeders aren't compatible they're just not they draw bears into our backyards and neighborhoods another big issue is bears and garbage a lesser extent but it certainly is a big issue and can be a big issue in places so we encourage everyone to store their garbage in the secure building a garage a shed put it out the morning a pickup not the day or night before put it out the curb in a can not just a trash bag if at all possible and if you don't have a shed or a garage or something we have plans to build these little garbage can storage sheds if you will they were put together by Florida Fish and Wildlife they're there they have a lot of issues with their bears with garbage because of tourists and things and so they put together extremely detailed plans tells you exactly how many boars how you have to cut them put them down so even if you're not a handy person you could put together one of these sheds and we have them available as PDFs in our offices if you wanted them dumpsters are potentially a pretty major issue and these can be from restaurants and property complexes retirement homes trailer RV parks summer camps in campgrounds typically that happens a lot in the Berkshires so anywhere where you have a group of people that are using a dumpster this can cause a potentially dangerous situation with bears if bears are readily accessing the garbage on a regular basis this has the potential to put people and bears in direct contact if someone's going to that dumpster at nine o'clock at night and there's a bear in it all the sudden you're this close to the bear the bear reacts defensively and it takes a swat at someone that's how someone gets injured by a black bear even if they're not aggressive the bear is not being aggressive it's all the sudden you're right there it gets spooked it reacts so dumpsters can be a potentially dangerous situation so bears can cave in the the top of plastic top dumpsters so we encourage anywhere if you have a place that is having issues with bears or other wildlife for that matter getting into dumpsters to request a metal top dumpster from your waste disposal company they will provide them sometimes there is an additional cost and sometimes they grumble about it but they will provide them but it's also important to make sure the doors are closed that they're latched so that the bear bears can slide them open if they're not latched um that they're not overflowing so if they're overflowing get a second dumpster or have them emptied more often um but we have had many places where they've had major issues with bears in their dumpster they get a metal top dumpster and those problems disappear these food sources are the reason that that bears in the backyard um if they they're not there there's no reason for that bear to be there so if we remove the food sources that bear is going to go back to natural areas and feeding on natural foods as i mentioned with that young collard female that we had those females um teach those cubs the same behaviors from day one where do you think when these cubs disperse in a year that you see in the picture they're going to go are they going to go now searching for food in the natural area are they going to be in the suburbs so those three cubs for with your bear from last winter they're dispersing now but they've learned these same behaviors so they're probably going to do those same form unfortunately the more time they spend there the more comfortable they get they can get bolder where all of a sudden they're trying to break into a shed or a garage to access bird seed or garbage that's stored there for some reason people store bird seed on screen porches and things and so now the obviously that provides no resistance to a bear they can smell it um so that's now blurring the lines between a bear breaking into a home um so this is how these behaviors can progress or now as i'll get into in a second they start um raiding chickens uh as they're encountering chicken coops in backyards and so the more time people the bears spend around people the greater the chances there are of a chance negative encounter we're fortunate in massachusetts that we've never had anyone seriously injured by black bear uh this is despite the very high level heavy levels of interaction that we see on a daily basis but we're trying to prevent that from happening and so you know the more time they spend around our neighborhoods the greater the chances there are that that could happen bears and chickens are becoming one of the bears and chickens really chickens are the biggest source of conflict with bears right now in massachusetts like i said as they're in backyards backyard chicken farming has become exceptionally popular i'm sure that this figure grossly underestimates the number of backyard chickens there are around in the area and if you remember this that means as the bears are using these areas they're encountering and you can't build a chicken coop or beehive that can withstand a bear they doesn't matter how well we think you built it even a young bear can tear into it and so we're really trying to encourage everyone who participates in these activities to use electric fencing um well built electric fencing um it works it's safe around kids and pets um they cannot get electrocuted by it they cannot get seriously injured by it if it's properly installed um and it is infected whoops i'm not sure what happened there give me a bear with me we jump to the end here um but remember your goal is to build an electric fence that is actually going to keep a bear out so build a good one and design one that will actually achieve that goal a couple years ago i put together a complete electric fencing guide it provides the materials our recommendations for how to set one up uh step by step instructions tips as how to make it more effective it's available on our bear page mass.gov forward slash bears electric fencing guide as a pdf um all the materials are available at any farm supply store so really if you have chickens or bees or you know anyone who does please encourage them to use electric fencing there's a lot of other information on our website most of it is similar to what you're hearing tonight about trying to prevent conflict not feeding bears um but it's available mass.gov forward slash bears again human associated foods are the main driver of bear conflict um these are just bears that are taking advantage of the foods we provide and they're never going to change it's just a bear being a bear and so really people have to change uh if we don't want these bears to be in our neighborhoods that we don't want to have experience the conflict with them remember these are our goals to have healthy wildlife populations healthy bear populations living in our natural areas in massachusetts and it's kind of up to individuals and communities as to as much as me as to how much we can achieve that um again there's our website mass.gov forward slash bears if you're ever having an issue with bears and you need assistance um the environment police are available 24 hours a day seven days a week at that number our regional office is in belcher town the biologist there dave fuller uh has an incredible amount of um bear experience he did that original population study in the late 80s and early 90s and has worked with bears for us ever since so a huge resource in your area i'm out of our west borough office and in always happy to help as well um so with that i'd be happy to uh take any questions that you have that was excellent information and i so enjoyed all of the photos i am going to look at the attendee room dave and let you get a sip of water and we will take questions as i see them appear okay um attendees raise your hands please and i will call on you one at a time again we have dave here from the commonwealth of massachusetts and we also have carol here who is our local animal control officer and i'm calling on iver brick because you popped up first ira please unmute and ask your question that was a great talk thank you so much i'm wondering what you can say about compost piles um we don't typically get many reports of bears getting into compost um i think when i to be honest i recall a single report and it was that person admitted to putting uh meat scraps in it so i would highly recommend not putting any meat scraps into it um but otherwise we don't get a lot of reports if you are experiencing issues you can try to get one of those contained units those drums that will keep it in you know something to keep it more contained and protected but we don't tend to hear a lot about it thank you dave and now um linda do you have a question for us yes i submitted it um a question earlier dave i have um vinegar bottles hanging from my bird feeders i do take my bird feeders in the vinegar bottles in at night and this tip was given to me by a friend in hatfield who hangs vinegar bottles under his bird feeders um we had a young bear here earlier this week and uh i was gone today somebody took down my suet feeder this afternoon broke the um the chain that holds it up which is pretty flimsy but i don't think a squirrel would take it down but took down the vinegar feeder along the vinegar bottle along with it never touched the suet never touched any of the other three feeders that i have and took off does does white vinegar actually repel bears we've only had one bear in our backyard actually two in the last three years since i started hanging the vinegar bottles underneath each feeder i don't know to be honest with you um you know it's probably one of those where it may work sometimes you know what could have happened possibly is that the bear broke it off the vinegar splashes out there's then that smell and it's did startle us off in this instance um i would say that it probably won't work in all circumstances and situations um it's possible that it may have some effectiveness but i doubt it would be 100 effective but you know it may help it you mentioned taking your bird feeders in at night our data shows that the majority of our bears are active as much during the day as they are at night um so and i hear that quite often that people say it's like oh i only put them out of the day and take a minute night that may do something but you know many of our bears you saw all the pictures there of bears at bird feeders in the middle of the day uh bears active in the day and how many times people saw those your amber spares active so again probably better than having them out 24 seven but it's it's not uh not as good as is having them removed but i unfortunately i can't say you know definitively if the the vinegar thing is going to be a cure all for it it's your turn to ask a question actually can i can i just say one thing you know so say you try the the vinegar thing or you know say you have your bird feeders out in winter you know you put them out in in winter and then you have a bear come through take them in you know remove them at that point and don't put them back out so the bears not coming back again and again so you know you can potentially try these things but if you are having a bear come in remove the bird feeders so trevor it's your turn to ask a question hi this is actually martha and i'm in amherst i'm curious what you can tell us about the male who is going to be looking to mate with the female who's been in our neighborhood yeah so i mean we don't we don't typically collar males we have occasionally in the past but with the female their skull is larger than their neck and so you can put the collar on and it won't slip off with the males their neck is is so big that a lot of times if you get a collar on them they just slide it off pretty quickly you certainly can't collar a a young male because they grow so fast and they grow so large that it just wouldn't be humane to put a collar on a a young male in that way um so i don't i don't know who's going to mate with her um we did put some gps collars on some very large males that we trapped in the quabbin kind of in pelum so probably in gates 12 to gate eight is where we had these traps um in one bear one of the males went across amherst swam across the connecticut river over to north hampton and back um one would run the entire prescott peninsula of the quabbin go down go into south hadley run around south hadley go back run the peninsula again and did that multiple times during the mating season another one swam from the quabbin visitor center to the south end of the prescott peninsula and did that seven or eight times in the mating season so males could cover extremely large distances in the mating season so you could have a male that's coming from from south hadley from from where from orange coming down and interacting with and mating with the female in your area and the concept during amherst what would you expect that they will do are they are they males or females the cubs here yep so she gave birth to four cubs um she was actually dead on a umass campus and gave birth to four cubs not this past winter but the winter before um three of those were females and one was a male um so she lost one of the cubs somewhere along the way um and we we didn't handle them because they were active all winter we did not handle them so i don't know um but it's either three females or two females in a male when the the cubs disperse typically the males disperse very widely so that male could end up in new hampshire over by wister could cross the connecticut river could go down to connecticut very long distance away typically the females will occupy a portion of their mother's range so mom may shift her range slightly to accommodate it or she'll kind of just use the periphery of mom's range and that kind of provides an advantage for her and for mom to pass her genes on because that cub knows knows the landscape there knows where to find food and so she's more likely to be successful raising her own cubs and therefore passing on mom's genes in the future so i would anticipate that at least two of those cubs will be somewhere in the area and using some portion of her range elaine it's your turn to ask your question uh hi there um so two weeks ago we had two cubs and a mom on our deck kind of just checking things out and they left my my husband was taking a video of it um and then a week after in the morning i noticed what might have been a mom or i don't really know so my question is um will it be safe to put out hummingbird feeders in a few weeks or are we like on the grocery store route for these these bears we're in amherst in amherst woods so we do have did that female have a collar by any chance you're still there sorry sorry yeah i got muted um so i didn't notice because it was too far away and it was night time when when my husband took the video but um i would say no but i don't know so we did we do have a um so the first female that female that i hinted that we um had captured in amherst when she was active downtown um she's now she slipped her collar in 2017 um and we had gps data part of her range was amherst woods um we she was already an old bear she was in her upper teens at that point and we kind of thought that likely she had died last summer we had a picture of a female with ear tags that looked like a very old female in amherst woods with with cubs so it's possible that it's it's that bear who's a quite would easily be over 20 years old we have another bear that we just trapped um right on the amherst palm line this past summer who is using amherst woods now so we just started to get gps data from her and part of her range is amherst woods so it's possible that it's her she did have two two cubs this winter newborn cubs um so certainly amherst woods there you're right next to lauren swamp you're right across from pelham hill so there's lots of natural habitat there are lots of bears there um we don't tend to get as many reports about hummingbird feeders so it they would be definitely the the by far the lesser of the two evils um i will be honest with you my wife puts out hummingbird feeders so i do not have any bird feeders but we do have hummingbird feeders i would say the same thing that i say with bird feeders um if you if all of a sudden the bear is coming to them um take them in and don't put them back out thank you katherine it's your turn to ask your question yes i was wondering i enjoyed hiking at quabban and a lot of people get freaked out that i don't carry bear spray with me i try to be just conscientious about not getting any near bears if i see them i was wondering what your opinion on that was um so there are people hiking in massachusetts on a daily basis um who don't carry bears you know i'd say the people that carry bear spray are in the vast minority um and again you know you're not dealing with an aggressive an aggressive animal so that you're talk about being aware of your surroundings uh if you do see a bear giving it the respect it deserves and not trying to get closer to take a better photo or anything like that you know typically we say if you're hiking and you encounter a bear it's good to let it know that you're there so you don't get closer and surprise it so you don't start talking to it raise your your arms so you look bigger and just not yelling or screaming at it but in a calm assertive voice hey mr bear i'm just over here going about my business and then slowly back up you know watch the bear and back up to increase the space between uh you and the bear and enjoy the sighting quite frankly you know it's uh you know it's a great thing to see them out there um if you were ever hiking and you were pursued by a bear on very very rare occasions black bears can be predatory towards people um there was a hiker in new jersey who was killed um probably five or six years ago now um and so if you were pursued like you you do what i said and you back off and the bear comes and then you move further off and you start you know hiking more quickly down the trail and the bears coming you you want to get out of there at that point um and not stick around but again that that is you know really very rare that that that occurs but if you wanted to carry bear spray you certainly can um and might as well talk about bear spray um here for everyone else if you're not aware what it is basically it is pepper spray it's designed to repel brown bears for a much larger and far more aggressive bears for people in alaska canada the rocky mountains where those animals exist um and basically it puts out a cloud of pepper spray out to about 20 30 or 30 feet and so you can wear it kind of in a little holster on on your on your belt if you encounter a bear at close range you spray that in front of you and basically it's going to get the pepper spray in the bear's eye and it's designed for the bear to run off and give you a time to get out of there but you know certainly i would not at all hesitate to recommend anyone hiking in the trails of amherst um in the quabin anywhere else in having any fear of having bears or black bears around and i'm going to unmute private citizen it's your turn to ask your question yeah so if it's a effective electrifying chicken coops uh has anybody ever electrified a bird feeder to keep bears away from it i would highly recommend and i would ask you not to do it um the reason being is i need the electric fencing to be effective for the chickens and beets um so almost every single one of our bears has learned that bird feeders are a food source and so if so they they know and they they come to them so if you put an electric fence around your bird feeder um the chances are that yeah you're not going to pay attention to whether it's always effective you know because you do have to maintain electric fences and and do certain things to make sure they're operating all the time um and also if that bear comes through that electric fence it's going to learn like oh i can actually get through this it's not as much of a deterrent for the people that are using it to protect you know their their livestock or whatnot that they have on their properties so we never give that recommendation to use electric fencing for bird feeders for that reason because we we really want to maintain it's affecting this uh for those that need it mary anderson it's your turn to ask your question okay thanks uh yeah you keep talking about the females ranges how territorial are these bears today i really guard their ranges or is it just a whatever so all home range is just a term that describes basically the the territory that an animal typically the the portion of the landscape that the animal uses in the typical year um but no black bears are not like a territorial like a coyote and a coyote family group will defend their territory from other coyote groups and if they come into it they're going to attack them and and try to defend it there's a lot of overlap between different bears um and so so there there's there's going to be quite a lot of overlap they tend to use the same range year on year for the most part they will shift occasionally over time use new areas whether it's because they're seeding it for females they're seeding it to their offspring as i mentioned um but no they're not a true territorial animal where they're they're defending it thanks roger it's your turn to ask a question i yes i love having bears around but one thing i don't know is what is the ecological benefits of having bears around you know in terms of uh the the the benefit it's not like they're a prey animal that's supporting other um other prey animals or anything like that so it's it's not i get this question when i quite frankly i have a difficult time answering it um you know certainly a role they play as they will serve as a scavenger you know they will clean up excuse me dead animals and things that are on the landscape um they disperse one thing they will do is they'll disperse berry seeds because they eat an enormous amount of berries and so if you find bear scat um in the late summer it's basically packed with whether cherry seeds blackberry seeds or what have you and so as they move around that's basically those seeds are highly fertilized and they can spread it on the landscape so that's an ecological role that they will certainly play um you know i would just say more having them around is it sounds like you're of like mine to to me that you know all of our wildlife species have have value are important to um to have in to maintain in a complete uh healthy ecosystem in our area and so certainly they have that intrinsic value of from from that nature if you will craig it's your turn to ask your question uh i have a can of bird seed out in the garage i've had a trash can left okay well thanks for listening i'll see you hello yep um so i have a can of a trash can of bird seed out in the garage left over from when i was actually hoping to to set up a bird feeder again um the bear came by and knocked it over but i had mixed it with cayenne pepper uh my they didn't eat anything um just spilled it on the on the floor of the garage but my question is are they likely to come back again and knock it over again it's possible i mean we definitely have bears that enter enter garages as i mentioned garages sheds and things to access bird seed um on a regular basis um or i don't know if it's a regular basis but it certainly is something that happens uh they definitely have a memory you know they know where um where things are in terms of like the cayenne um one of the ways that people misuse pepper spray bear spray was people would buy it and then go backpacking or camping somewhere and basically they'd spray their tent down or the area around their tent thinking that it was going to repel bears uh and in reality that ended up attracting bears because of the smell you know uh and it kind of defeats the purpose of how the pepper spray is supposed to be used um it's possible that the the cayenne will you know the bear got it and it's like no i'm not gonna try that again um it's possible it'll come back it's it's tough to say but they do have a memory in terms of where food sources are thank you lisa v it's your turn to ask your question lisa are you there yeah i was just muted so okay um i guess my question is what ecological role do humans play and how do you um how do you look at all this from a from a multi-species perspective instead of from a human perspective yeah i mean as a a wildlife biologist you know i think anyone who gets into wildlife biology does it because they have an interest in in wildlife in the outdoors and it's like we enjoy doing fieldwork and these are the reasons that we we get into the field and you take your classes on biology and population ecology habitat management all these different things uh and then you get your first job and i manage people there's not a ton of wildlife management that you end up doing it's certainly in a place like massachusetts that is a human dominated landscape um almost every single decision that we have to make uh regarding managing a population has to take into account people um whether it's management decisions or the effects of people on conservation of different species um i actually took the slides out of the talk um but a postdoc who was working with us at umass did a lot of analyses on the movement of our color black black bears in massachusetts and how they were interacting with different natural features as well as the human landscape to move across massachusetts and so this can be used to inform conservation in conservation planning to maintain connectivity for bears on the landscape um but yeah no every single thing that we do um takes into account um people and and so obviously i talked in that when i was talking about the biology the side different sizes of urban versus rural bears that's primarily because of the the human associated food factor that that one group of bears gets that the other doesn't um while these bears in these suburban areas are in better body condition um because of those food sources they may produce more and more robust cubs there's also lots of mortality that's associated with living in those areas vehicle collisions nuisance kills can be higher in these suburban areas because it's a risky environment they're crossing roads on a regular basis they're interacting with people so we know that that female lost one of her cubs you know before really even you guys were seeing her on a regular basis we don't know exactly how that occurred but many of you have also reported to us um and i've been said video one of those cubs has a severe limb um and that's likely it was involved in a vehicle collision that's typically how those limbs occur or it's possible that someone uh shot at it people do shoot at bears as they're feeding in their bird feeders and so these are certainly different ways that the human landscape and people affect you know what is going to be the biology of this animal Paige would you like to ask your question yes i have raspberry beds in my garden and i haven't had a problem with bears in 20 years would you suggest removing them no i have blueberry bushes um you know i think it's one of those if you have fruit um try to pick it when it's ripe you know as soon as it becomes ripe um if there's fruit that falls on the ground clean it up you know if you have a you know an apple tree a crab apple tree rather than just leaving it on the ground that animals can come whether it's a bear a coyote whatnot um clean it up when it's falling down so um you know just maintaining those but you know you can still enjoy those those things certainly you just may lose a crop you know a year to uh to the bears but it's also it's a that's a little different than uh than a bird feeder or something that provides kind of a a permanent if you will food source that the bear knows to find you know pretty much every time it wanders through the neighborhood it would have to wander through there the one time when those fruit happen to be ripe um so that may happen sometime but there's many many years where that probably won't happen Sarah P it's your turn to ask your question hi thanks um i have a couple of questions one is um whether or not the hot pepper suet will be bothered by the bears can i use that instead yeah as i mentioned before with the person who had the bird seed i don't know that to to to be sure um it may have some effects um it may not you know again these bears will eat dead animals they'll eat garbage so you know they're certainly willing to eat things that that we won't the other thing is that they have a search image right they know what a bird feeder looks like they know what a suet cake hanging on something looks like so even if they so those things can still be a draw to your yard even if they don't ultimately eat them because that's what they're looking for is those things hanging in the backyard or hanging on your deck because they're a known food source to them okay and the second question i had is as carol knows we have a bad problem around here with people letting their dogs off leash to run into the mount holey of range have you had a lot of problem with dogs and bears interacting i would say no however i was just forwarded an email from the environmental police about a bear dog encounter that happened in amherst uh yesterday um so this was in south amherst i do not know the details of it but that the dog it sounds like was swiped by the bear um so typically i would say that is uncommon um you know maybe i give reports of two a year uh in the entire state in 99.9 percent of the time it is the dog that is initiating the encounter but this is one of the why you don't want to have the attracting bears to your backyard issues um so this can be a place where humans and bears interact you open the sliding glass door to open to let your dog in the backyard the bear who's been coming to your deck to get food all of a sudden the bear and the dog are right there dog goes after the bear bear starts going after the dog you go out there to try to rescue your dog which we all do um and now all of a sudden you're tangling with a bear um so that's one of those situations but no certainly i mean i'm not as worried about bears and dogs they're not going after dogs in a predatory sense you know most of the time they're going to ignore the dog unless the dog goes after them um i'm also responsible for managing coyotes um and so coyotes are certainly they will go after dogs both small dogs that they see as a potential prey item um but also medium and large sized dogs as i mentioned before they are a territorial animal and so they perceive a medium to large sized dog as an interloper in their territory as a threat to their territory or their pups um so we regularly do have coyotes attacking dogs in massachusetts um in yards but then also off leash and so the recommendation there is to have your dog in a leash if you're on the other end of the leash your presence should prevent that animal from going after your dogs because there is that inherent fear of you still from that animal if the dog is off leash and it's 20 30 feet away from you you may as well not be there in terms of that wild animal thinking about your dog and so there is that potential for a negative encounter there thank you all right we are moving on to elizabeth elizabeth hi just wondering about whether you recommend the make a lot of noise to get the bear out of your yard we don't have any bird feeders but we are on an area where we had the whole family visiting quite regularly and hanging out kind of lying down and just is there any way to move them along or is that just bad behavior i typically don't recommend it because of the fact that they are such a large and powerful animal um and so we've only ever had six instances where someone a bear has made physical contact with the person that we know of in massachusetts and one of them was where a very large bear presumably a male was doing damage to someone's peach tree out in the berkshires and the guy ran out there ran up to the bear trying to scare it off yelling at it but he ran up to about 30 feet and that was close enough that the bear decided like nope that's too close the bear dropped and charged him and so it knocked into him knocked him down and then left and so bears will do what's called a bluff charge will they'll kind of run up close and they'll pound their paws and make some huffing noises and things as a threat to tell you you're too close back off but it's not they're not necessarily it doesn't mean they're going to attack i just don't well i don't try to put people in close proximity to a bear um if it was a coyote in your backyard i would say physically chase it out of the yard yell and scream throw small objects at it and drive it out of the yard i don't give that recommendation for a bear uh just because of the differences in in the potential they have that being said you can try it a lot of times when people do try to scare a bear off the bear looks at them look goes back to what it's doing looks at them if they persist and it will get up and saunter off and it's good time you know they they can be difficult to spook because they spend so much time there they're comfortable and they're just like yeah i'll i'll move on um but they may not do it in a real hurry so if you do it just don't get too close to the animal um you know do it from your deck but be close to the door to get back inside uh and you can try to scare it off from from a distance but just be ready to get back inside um in a real hurry if you need to and p would you like to ask your question um yeah uh thank you so much i'm learning a lot and i was i'm a little confused about one thing i don't eat meat so i don't pee there's no meat in my compost and certainly the bears uh came into my compost this uh this past summer and nika actually saw them and they did damage to the fence around it but i'm wondering is there any time during the year any months where i'm a little safer putting my compost out than others other months yeah i mean so it's like i said you know it's not common and it may just be it's when bears typically do hit compost um it's not something that people feel the need to call us about so we don't get the reports of it but it is happening and i don't know about it um excuse me um certainly anytime bears are active so you know as i mentioned most of the bears are emerging sometime in late march or april and they're not entering the dens until sometime in november or december so that certainly is your your active period for bears being out there um you know your mid winter months are the typical months where there are fewer or no bears on the landscape but you know you obviously all experienced the situation this year where they remained active all winter um typically speaking bears are dend in the the deeper winter months you know if we've got a foot of snow on the ground uh in mid december and it's been there for a while most of the bears are going to be dending up at that point. Pam r it's your turn and welcome oh oh this is actually alex okay alex go ahead please hi um thank you very much for taking the time to explain bears it's been very useful many people grow up being afraid of bears and they they hear stories about brown bears and and part of a hard time differentiating between black bear behavior and grizzly so there's one um one thing that people hear and that is don't get between a mother bear and her cubs and um i would i wish i've kind of asked that you speak to that and whether or not somebody is in danger if they get between a mother bear and her cubs sorry black bear yep um you know it's certainly not a place you want to be you know i mean again they're black bears and brown bears are very different in their disposition you know brown bears are aggressive you know that's where you start you hear stories about people being mauled in yellow stone and those kind of things those are brown bears um if this was a brown bear that we were dealing with we would have taken action this past winter it wouldn't have been living in town like that um and so you're you are there is a very very different uh disposition if you find yourself between a sow in in her cubs a mother in her cubs get get out of there you know try to back off to to make sure that you're not there um you're likely in that instance to see her starting to do some of those those bluff behaviors where either she's making you know quick little charges or that kind of thing and then backing off and a little charge or you know like they make a a huffing sound and like pop their jaws that's kind of their threat behavior where they're it's not threatening violence it's threatening like i'm uncomfortable with this situation and so just just make sure that if you all right there's cubs there and mom's over there move yourself so that she can can get out of there one of the things she's probably going to try to do right away is tell the cubs to go up a tree that's the natural defense mechanism for uh for black bears and the cubs can climb as soon as they leave the den as the the young little cubs and so she sends them up the tree if she senses senses danger and so if she does that and now she's still over there in the cubs in her tree again back off she's not going to call those cubs down and she's not going to leave until she feels comfortable doing so so give her space uh go inside to to let her do it she'll call them down when she's comfortable and they'll move on susan it's your turn to ask your question please i know you addressed making noises before but um my husband bought me an air horn because i do a lot of work um on the back end of my property um dragging branches and different things and i've seen bears back there but i don't want to do something that's like going to be irritating and i certainly when i walk back in that area i sing or make noise assuming that's enough to um let them know i'm around um but i just wondered if that was something i should be like carrying with me or if it's something that would just make the situation worse yeah i mean it's tough to say i mean if you're if you end to find yourself where you are you know really close to the bear i don't know if i would immediately blast the air horn right there because you're right it could all of a sudden startle it and it reacts more strongly than it would if it just sees you there but what you're doing with the the singing or whistling or talking to yourself for that kind of thing it is perfect um because the thing you're trying not to do is to surprise them um and so if they know you that you're there they're going to avoid you you know they're they're not going to try to just you know come up they know what a person is they know the sounds that we make etc and so doing those kind of things is really your best bet to just make sure you're not startling that bear it knows where you are and those kind of things um you know just as easily as the um the air horn is that pepper spray you know if you're doing yard work it really does it comes in a nice little holster that can go on your belt um and that can be something that you have there that if you do find yourself really close to an animal it's there and you can get it out in a real hurry and and that's going to be a surefire deterrent if you had it there um so that could be something you carried you know as an alternative to to the air horn is that something that um like i in 20 years i've only had my compost ripped apart once yep so i i think it's pretty safe to use it and that and that was like in early march when i think they were just starving um but is that something it's quite a ways from my deck um if if if bears are coming in my yard or doing something is is that something i could effectively do like from my kitchen window inside and scare them out of my yard or is that not necessary just let them pass through and you mean the air horn yeah yeah and so that that's what i was talking about before you know so that's that's one of those things that you know if you went out if they're in the back portion of your yard um and someone was asking this before about you know trying to haze them out of there make noise to haze them out of there yeah don't go you know out into the back portion of the yard to do it but if you know you go out onto your deck and they're still 50 feet away excuse me you can blow the air horn yell at them from there and then you've got the the door there you know right behind you if suddenly they did start coming they're they're not likely to but you know that's where you can say hey you know get out of here at this point you can blow the air horn from that this okay thank you so i think everyone who's had their hand up has asked a question i just wanted to ask carol carol when is a good time to contact you like do you need to know about every bear we see in town when should we be notifying you and and how does your office work with the commonwealth when it comes to bears and and amherst well they can certainly call me i would rather they call my direct line and call 911 because that that really is an issue with the dispatchers they've got their hands full as it is with a lot of my other calls besides bears and we know like Dave said we know they're here we know they're going to stay here they're going to come back we're going to have to learn to coexist with them and all those things that he discussed is is what i've been telling people throughout my 20 something years here but i i still would like to be if it's something that you feel i don't want i don't want it out there never to call anybody because if there is something wrong i certainly would want to know what and then i would either call Dave or i mean Dave here this day or the day for that i've dealt with quite a few other occasions in town too so who i would direct them to either this either today we spoke to today or today for over in belcher town but it's okay to call me but please let's let's think to call the uh my direct line which everybody in massachusetts seems to have anyway so paul go ahead i see your hand up yeah just a quick question um ticks and bears are they carriers of ticks is that a common thing they will so when we trap them this time of year like in the den in the winter they're they're kind of pristine but this time of year when we're trapping them they will have ticks almost everything will um there there's almost no no animals that aren't going to have be some some level of carrier for ticks so dave and carol i know it's getting late do we have time for more questions i see some hands that are still up i'm going to lower all the attendees hands and then if you still have a question please raise your hand again and we will finish up this has been great i mean i have learned so much this evening thank you for your time it's been really like captivating it's so exciting to have someone who knows so much carol and dave that's available to us and that you that you know our territory so intimately you know it's great then quite okay i i really have learned so much as well thank you all right trevor i'm going to ask you to unmute and you can ask your question yeah are there any other wild animals that we should be uh thinking about and how we should sort of adapt our behavior to accommodate yeah i mean so as i said i i'm responsible for you know most of the the wildlife um that you're going to have the mammals that you're going to have around your property so the raccoons the possums the skunks the fox the coyote they all fall under my management almost everything that i've said about bears you can transfer to those animals uh the reason that they're around your home's neighborhoods and town is to take advantage of the food sources all these species are very highly adaptable in terms of their ability to live in and amongst us and many of those smaller species even more so uh than a bear can so you know to not have those animals around your homes the the key message is still to remove the food sources um some of those things then change in terms of as i mentioned before with coyotes coyotes is really are the number one one in terms of the the other form of conflict and that's associated with your pets so keeping your dogs on a leash really is important with coyotes around um keeping cats inside important with coyotes around um those are the the big issues there again the difference between coyotes and bears um if you don't want the coyotes on your property act hyper aggressive towards them there is a natural fear of people but the more time they spend in developed areas the more comfortable they get and you're trying to teach them no you're not welcome here and so really physically drive chase them off the property make lots of noise and really drive them off um and over time they'll get that message they're not welcome there so if you don't have the food that's drawing them in you teach them they're not welcome they're likely to spend less time around your home but the food is really human associated food is the number one driver of human wildlife conflicted by far in massachusetts all your hands up again do you have another question but you're muted pa I do uh so councillor lobe said Brett raised the issue a little bit while a little while ago is there something that town should be doing Dave about um you know helping to help manage other than education of people that that you see other towns have done that's a good thing to do yeah so I mean probably the the the biggest option that you that you can consider um is whether or not you would want to consider uh some sort of a feeding ordinance um and so they can be drafted in a way that you know it doesn't remove someone's ability to still feed birds or whatnot if they want to but if it's identified that that bird feeder is drawing in animals and it's causing conflict then they would be required to to remove them and so certainly we'd be willing to help with the drafting on something if you have that North Hampton has one I know West Springfield has one we just helped Stockbridge um they were having a lot of bear issues in towns primarily with some people that were intentionally feeding but with dumpsters and so they passed an ordinance to try to address some of those issues um and I've shared that that ordinance with with an EECA so you know it is something that that could be an option if you wanted to consider that okay Elizabeth you have another question for us yes um I was just curious as to what do you think the carrying capacity is of our area for bears considering we have a female that potentially just produced three new females and how are and presumably the other bears in the area are doing similar thing and I'm just wondering are they just all dispersing out of the area are we going to have you know triple quadruple the number of bears in Amherst so when I was at UMass and we first started putting out GPS collars we did a lot on the west side of the Connecticut River in North Hampton Williamsburg up through the Conway area and then we had a bear in the Amherst area the bear on the Holy Oak range in South and some bears out in the Worcester County the bears west of the Connecticut River where we have much higher bear densities had 40 square kilometer home ranges so really pretty small home ranges east of the river it was 200 square kilometers so five times the size and we believe that was due to the differences in bear density so since we we put the first GPS collar out in 2009 and so even since and obviously not all those animals were collared right away so it probably wasn't until 2012 that we started noticing this the home ranges in your area have been shrinking and so they're getting closer and closer to the home range size that we had west of the Connecticut River and so basically as the bear density is increasing they're using smaller areas and so there are more bears that can be supported in the area and we have you know between the quabbin and in Amherst I mean we have seven or eight females collared you know using different portions of the area and so if you think half of them are pregnant every other year they're producing 2.7 cubs you know it's the population density is increasing in your area and there still is potential for it to increase where you there are more bears in the area and we anticipate that that will happen and so we come to I think Beth Beth s hi hello um we had a bear come through our yard about last June and broke off the top six feet of a white fur that we had that was about 13 feet tall and there were um bear prints all around the base of the tree and then since then we've seen some bear prints around it occasionally we're just wondering is was it a bear marking the tree and will the bear keep coming back and trying to use it as a marking tree if we cut the tree down will they decide to use one of our other trees as a marking tree I guess we're just curious what that was all about no I think you're exactly right and you said it was about this time of year so that's the mating season so it was very likely that it was a male that was they they're kind of aggressive they've got a lot of horn ones going on this time of year and so breaking off the tree we've seen that at some trap sites before where you know a good size hemlock or something is snapped off by one of these bears so you know again that demonstrates the power that these animals have but then though those species like the spruce and the pines that have pitch and resin in them the bears will rub on those to to get their scent on it so they're using it as a scent post for marking may come back may not come back you said you have seen activity near it in the past cutting it down may be enough if you have other other spruce there though there's a distinct possibility that it could pick another one to to use that for as well but you're you're exactly right it probably is as a scent marking and kind of leaving its scent kind of behavior they could come back and want to use it again so we can just sort of leave it as a sacrificial tree so they don't go destroy some other tree yeah because it's probably not going to come through there on a you know on a regular basis to do it either you know so it's probably not you know it shouldn't be this any kind of a major draw to your property or anything by by having it remain there but yes you may not if you don't want to have other trees damaged it might not be the worst thing to to leave it there okay thanks all right our very final question is coming from freddy freddy it's your turn to ask your question well i was kind of waiting and i wasn't going to but i thought i'm i'm on fearing street i've had the mother bear and cubs in the yard a couple of times um and that's fine my question is about walking by myself very early in the morning down around the stadium i used to do that you know it was before dawn and and that was a wonderful time to walk and i have to say that i have stopped doing that because as a person by myself early in the morning and and there are other people sometimes there but most of them have dogs or they have another person accompanying them i just am not i really don't feel comfortable about um what would i do if i did see a bear and i know you have you have directions and i thought okay do i have to get out my directions and read them to to read the protocol you know so is it is it unwise for someone at my age to be out by myself early in the morning like that no you're a spring chicken you should go out and you should keep you should keep walking um no but seriously you know i showed the data with all those points that showed how many bears there are using your area there are people on the bike paths there are people hiking the trails there are people using that i know exactly where you're talking about by the stadium there um there are people out there on a daily basis there are bears out there there are coyotes out there there are these animals out there occasionally people run into them and those kind of things but there aren't negative encounters that are occurring either so i feel very comfortable telling you that be comfortable out there walking don't hesitate to walk um you talked about you know i don't know whether you want to this is something some people will do for hiking in the rockies again with these other bears is to get the bells that you put on your your bear bells shoes or whatever exactly bear bells that just make that little bit of noise so that you know if there was a bear something there that it can hear you and it knows you're coming um i also mentioned that bear spray before um you know i do get comments from people whether it's associated with bears or coyotes that they're afraid to walk their dog anymore to go out in the forest the exact year sentiment get some of that bear spray uh again it's it's a really simple thing to do um it slides right into a little pouch so it's it's right there that if you should have it um it's easy to pull out you literally pop a cap off and then it's just um so that you could carry that and then that would be just some an insurance policy if you will um should you need it um so i would recommend getting something like that and please please don't stop doing the things you enjoy um because of the presence of bears or other wildlife out there i have to say too i i have a i have a compost and the bears have visited the compost but never never done anything to it it's been just fine nice all right well thank you everyone this has been wonderful and again um thank you carol and thank you dave and counselor lopes great idea um it's really smart that we recorded this and we'll put it up on the youtube channel and i encourage everybody to send in more questions if they have them and we'll try and get them answered for you you can send those to get involved at amherstma.gov but um thanks again everyone and have a great evening thank you good night many thanks thank you dave thank you carol all and thank you everyone thank you dave