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Black bear encounters are on the rise in Tennessee. Instead of trying to control the bear population, wildlife managers there are promoting peaceful coexistence. From WPLN and the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, Caroline Eggers reports.
CAROLINE EGGERS, BYLINE: Along a steep, forested hillside in Gatlinburg, Tennessee wildlife biologist Janelle Musser is looking for black bears. Before long, a woman in the distance calls out excitedly.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS CRUNCHING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: There’s a bear here with a cub.
JANELLE MUSSER: So just be cautious.
EGGERS: It’s a female bear, maybe about 200 pounds, and she has two cubs with her.
MUSSER: (Whispering) Oh, my goodness. Look at them.
EGGERS: The mama bear eats grass while the cubs practice climbing up trees. Musser says this is how people should experience bears – at a safe distance.
MUSSER: Something so amazing as this is to see bears, to see a female with cubs and them doing what they’re supposed to be doing.
EGGERS: As opposed to seeing them go through trash, open up car doors or worse.
State officials say there are about 6,000 bears in Tennessee today. Populations have been trending up in recent decades, even as the state allows hunters to kill a few hundred bears each year. But the animals used to live all over forested areas of the U.S. In the South, they mostly retreated to the Appalachian Mountains after centuries of intense hunting and logging. Matt Drury of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy says their limited habitat is still under threat.
MATT DRURY: And in the face of climate change, especially forest types that are at higher elevations, they can’t migrate any higher in the mountain if they’re already on the top.
EGGERS: Take extreme weather. Two years ago, a tropical storm dumped record rainfall and wrecked hundreds of thousands of acres of Appalachian forest. A lack of water is also an issue. In mid-May, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was in severe drought. Former longtime park ranger Greg Grieco says that worsens springtime food scarcity.
GREG GRIECO: This time of year, bears’ diets are pretty much limited to salad and grubs.
EGGERS: That can push bears to search for food around people. Already, the city of Gatlinburg bought bear-proof dumpsters and required them at homes and rentals. All over town, signs teach people how to keep trash out of cars and outdoor spaces. But sometimes that’s not enough.
(SOUNDBITE OF VEHICLE ENGINE RUMBLING)
EGGERS: Musser, the wildlife agent, pulls into a driveway of a rental cabin. Two people are on the porch near a cage with an adolescent bear inside.
(SOUNDBITE OF VEHICLE BEEPING)
MUSSER: Hello.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Hi.
MUSSER: Have you guys seen any other ones milling about the trap?
EGGERS: The renter, Mason Eads, says it’s just a lone bear. He’s visiting from Ohio with Shana Bicknell. After getting groceries one day, bears got into their car within minutes. Then on…
MASON EADS: Our second day here, we had four bears get into the cabin. They popped the lock on the sliding door.
EGGERS: They weren’t there, but a neighbor saw them and shooed them away. Bicknell says she’s been to Gatlinburg many times and had never seen bears.
SHANA BICKNELL: Before this trip, they almost kind of, like, felt like a myth.
EGGERS: While perhaps surreal, the situation is uncomfortable, especially for the little bear…
(SOUNDBITE OF BEAR HUFFING)
EGGERS: …Who wasn’t the target, so Musser releases it back into the wild.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAGE DOOR OPENING)
MUSSER: Go.
EGGERS: But the other bears may face euthanization if they’re caught. Musser says that happens when a bear opens a door into a home, potentially becoming a public safety risk.
MUSSER: Because that bear’s now learned to do that, and it’s probably not going to stop that behavior.
EGGERS: That’s why she says people need to learn to coexist with bears and not give them a reason to get close.
For NPR News, I’m Caroline Eggers in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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