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c85efc31-ec0f-4b6d-90d3-54469f8579bc < Back Preparing for Cubs This black bear mother is preparing for the birth of her cubs by gathering balsam fir branches that she then chewed up for more bedding. Previous Next

1b8a07aa-8c33-46e7-8fcc-92a2e57b5307 Smiling Bears, A Zookeeper Explores the Behavior and Emotional Life of Bears Few people have known bears as intimately as Else Poulsen has. This remarkable book reveals the many insights about bears and their emotional lives that she has gained through her years of work with them. Always approaching each bear with the same two questions in mind — "Who are you?" and "What can I do for you?" — Poulsen has shared in the joy of a polar bear discovering soil under her paws for the first time in 20 years and felt the pride of a cub learning to crack nuts with her molars. She has also felt the hateful stare of one bear that she could not befriend, and she has grieved in the abject horror of captivity for a sun bear in Indonesia. Featuring photographs from Poulsen's personal collection, Smiling Bears provides an enlightening and moving portrait of bears in all their richness and complexity. Else Poulsen May 5, 2009 272 Pages:

May 3, 2023 Late spring prompts more bear complaints Posted Wednesday, May 3, 2023 7:14 pm Marshall Helmberger REGIONAL— It’s been a long winter, and not just for the human residents of the North Country. Black bears are emerging from their long winter naps hungrier than usual, and with the late snow melt they’re finding little in the way of natural foods to recover after several months without eating. And that’s got at least a few bears turning to other sources of potential food, like bird feeders and other animal feed put out by local livestock growers, causing damage at residences mostly in the Tower area. “We had a big bear on the property Thursday night,” said Becky Gawboy, who raises a variety of livestock just south of Tower. “It destroyed the inside of the pig yard, ripped off the door, and sent the pigs running. They were gone for days.” The big bruin also tipped over the Gawboy’s bird feeder, and pulled down a peanut feeder that was hung eight feet up in the air. “He just trashed everything everywhere he went,” said Gawboy. The bear was a repeat offender, showing up the next day. But Gawboy said all her animals and various sources of food had been moved to the barn by then, relatively safe behind locked doors. The bear was also back on Monday night this week, and pulled down the one remaining peanut feeder, which was nearly empty. Jessica Holmes, DNR Tower Area wildlife manager, said the problem appears to be a localized one this spring. “There’s a local bear that’s creating a lot of havoc, including here at the DNR office,” said Holmes. She said bears often turn to easy sources of food in the spring, especially before some of the spring greens start emerging. “But we’re hearing no widespread complaints. It appears to be a pretty isolated situation.” The problem bear hasn’t been content to wreak havoc at just one location. Just down the road from Gawboys, what appears to be the same bear has left Lisa Anderson and her family feeling almost trapped inside their house, fearful of going outside without a gun. Anderson said she first saw the big bear while coming home from Tower on Saturday evening. She turned into her driveway to see it standing in the middle of the drive, looking at her. She honked the horn, but rather than running away as she expected, the bear scratched at the dirt, squatted, and defecated, producing what she described as an enormous pile of partially digested black oil sunflower seeds. Rather than try to make a run for the house, she drove away for a while, hoping the bear would leave. Instead, it went on a rampage, ripping down fences that house her sizable flocks of chickens, ducks, geese, and guinea hens. It’s also caused damage to fences that contain her horses, and left them unusually skittish. Anderson said the bear has returned repeatedly since then. She’s tried using firecrackers and pistol shots to scare the bear away, mostly without effect. While the bear’s initial foray onto her property seemed to focus on accessing animal feed, she was petrified when it ventured onto her deck the other night, concerned that it would try to gain entry to the house. “There is no food there, so the only reason to come on the deck would be to break in,” she said. Anderson said she contacted the Department of Natural Resources and spoke to a conservation officer who told her that the agency no longer relocates Anderson said that isn’t the answer she was looking for. “I want it gone, I don’t want it dead,” she said. In the meantime, she said she doesn’t go outside without a gun right now just in case the bear shows up. While most residents haven’t seen the kind of damage experienced by Anderson or Gawboy, bears have been showing up at residences all around the area. Bears, of various sizes, have been frequent visitors around homes in Tower and elsewhere, scrounging for anything edible, but most damage, if any, has been minor. Anderson said the conservation officer she spoke with told her that the situation would improve in the next few weeks as things start to green up and bears turn their attention elsewhere for food. While the bear will eventually move on, neither Anderson nor Gawboy is interested in waiting around if the bear is going to continue to cause damage. Gawboy said if the bear shows up during daylight, she’ll solve the problem— permanently.

3595fd36-9b08-4484-bfd6-39332f0ba315 < Back Slide 8 of 83 < > In Minnesota, white pines have always been cut at unsustainable rates, and we've nearly lost our white pine forests and our white pine industry.

2d35f25a-9788-49d6-9682-eaab25697d99 < Back Slide 33 of 83 < > If a young white pine gets the disease, it usually dies.

e6b929fc-f60b-4e31-88c8-1ac6e5c908de < Back Slide 64 of 83 < > They slept next to them with their cubs at night, passing up thousands of other trees to sleep next to a big white pine.

August 19, 2023 North American Bear Center in Ely ranked No. 4 museum in Minnesota by Tripadvisor by Elizabeth Granger Mesabi Tribune Holly, 10, is from Arkansas. Separated from her mother by a wildfire, she was rescued by a man who cared for her for 6 months. She moved on to a rehabilitation facility, which determined she would not survive in the wild. She was rescued by NABC in December 2013. Her name reflects the time of year she moved to Ely. Also that the holly berry is a natural bear food. Photo courtesy of North American Bear Center. ELY—South Carolinians Evonne Swanson and her family were sightseeing along the North Shore recently when an artist they met suggested they visit Ely. “We turned around and came here on his advice." Swanson said. The suggestion took them to the North American Bear Center. "At first I thought. ‘Oh. that's not good—people interacting with bears,” she said. "But this develops respect and appreciation; this is educational. This is the way it should be done." It's a sentiment clearly shared by many, because Tripadvisor’s 2023 list of Minnesota's best museums has the Bear Center ranked No. 4. Ursine residents Lucky, Tasha and Holly welcome visitors from their attractive new enclosures, completed earlier this year, that include bear dens as well as plenty of foliage. A pond below the viewing deck invites the trio to take a dip on hot summer days, although not all three at the same time. When one of the bears blows bubbles in the water, you’ll hear laughter from visitors as they talk of their early swimming lessons. Each of the bears is a rescue. Lucky, the only male, is 16; Holly, 10; and Tasha, 8. They'll spend the rest of their lives at the center because experts have determined they would not survive in the wild. Ted and Honey were the centers first bears. Honey was 20 when she died in 2016: Ted was almost 26 when he died last fall. The current bear trio is the big deal here, to be sure. Behind the Scenes tours take visitors for a short, narrated walk along the enclosures to meet the bears. But small animals—Tuck the turtle. Sid and Sophie the salamanders. Spaghetti and Linguine the snakes—are among local animals that welcome visitors, especially the young set, to show-anti tell-and-touch opportunities during Critter Time in the Cub Room. A wide view of northern Minnesota wildlife is in the Northwoods Ecology Hall. "To fully understand any type of animal, you have to understand the area where it lives and what it lives with." said biologist/assistant director Spencer Peter. "When people first walk in. there’s a ’Wow!’ because the moose towers over the whole room. You never get the chance to be nose-to-nose to a moose like that." The center is the dream- come-true of Dr. Lynn Rogers. who has spent more than five decades studying the black bear. In addition to the bear center, the Ely area also accommodates his Wildlife Research Institute. Rogers is regarded by many as "the Jane Goodall of black bears." Rogers’ trust-based research methods combine scientific observation with modern technology. Attitudes change as bears themselves show humans their reality. Much of that information is presented in short, easy-to-understand snippets displayed throughout the museum. Bear habitat, habits, hibernation, reproduction, communication, .... More than a smidgin of information dispels myths about bears. Examples? No real bear likes honey as much as Winnie the Pooh does. Hibernation times depend on a bear's genetics. Bears from northern climes hibernate earlier and longer than do bears from southern climes. Tasha, from Kentucky, hibernates from late October through late March. Lucky, from Wisconsin, hibernates earlier and longer. So does Holly, from Arkansas. because it's been determined that she has some "northern" genes. Black bear attacks are extremely rare. Rogers has written: “What should people do if they see a black bear in the wild? Basically, enjoy it.” "There are many people who are fully supportive of this center." Peter said. “They love the bears, and they love watching them on the live cam if they can’t be here. We’ve been blessed to have a ton of supporters and a ton of volunteers who always step up to the plate.” In addition to the new fencing, areas throughout the building, including the ledge below the huge viewing windows, have been recently updated. There are a new nesting platform for a large bird of prey such as an osprey or eagle, a fisher nest box, a boreal owl nest box, a bat "hotel" that can hold quite a few bats. Plans are in the works for additional nature trails. “We want you to come learn about bears,” Peter said. “In a nutshell, that's our mission. We don’t want people to go to bear country, wherever it is. and be fearful about black bears. They're not an animal that requires that amount of tear. Come visit us and learn the truth about them.”

39dbea23-1b2f-40c9-a598-c05755bcf17c BLACK BEAR DIET Beaked Hazel, American Hazel - Flower Parts Corylus cornuta, Corylus americana April Late Winter Beaked and American Hazel are prolific shrubs that grow in the forest understory and at the edge of forests, often referred to as the Forester’s nightmare as the shrubs they are often thickly distributed and difficult to navigate through. Bears feed on the catkins during the early spring.

March 30, 2022 Do bears need a break? High hunter harvests may be be holding back recovery of the region’s black bear population Posted Wednesday, March 30, 2022 6:50 pm Marshall Helmberger As I’ve written here before, there is reason to be concerned about the status of the black bear population here in the North Country, in part because the population here on the Canadian Shield isn’t like the population found elsewhere in Minnesota. It’s obvious that the ability of a bear population, or any wildlife population, to sustain a given level of human hunting mortality is dependent on the ability of that species to replace those elements of the population lost to hunting or other sources of mortality each year. As top predators, bears have evolved for a very slow rate of reproduction, in order to prevent them from outstripping their habitat’s carrying capacity. In fact, bears exhibit some of the lowest reproductive rates of any terrestrial mammals, which means their ability to bounce back from downturns to their population is limited. For bears, hunter harvest is the primary form of mortality. As a substantial body of scientific literature has documented, the ability of black bears to sustain themselves in the face of human harvest is limited, and is highly dependent on available foods. It’s long been known that bear populations on the Shield have more limited reproductive potential due to limited foods compared to more productive areas to our south. Many of the most favored bear foods found elsewhere in the eastern half of North America are rare or non-existent here and that impacts bears in several ways. A 1981 study by two Canadian biologists, Fred Bunnel and David Tait, is still widely acknowledged to be among the most authoritative studies on bear population dynamics and it is worth reading by anyone with an interest in the subject. The study finds that the reproductive capacity of black bear populations is highly connected to their nutritional condition. Bears that have access to abundant food reach breeding age earlier, have large litters and more frequent litters. According to Bunnel and Tait, bears in quality habitat, such as is typical in central Minnesota or much of the northeastern U.S., can sustain a higher level of harvest. That’s because bears there reach sexual maturity at an average of 4.5 years, give birth on an average of once every 2.1 years, and have an average litter size of 3.1 cubs. Based on such criteria, bears can sustain an annual mortality rate of approaching 20 percent. But that number drops significantly in locations, like far northeastern Minnesota, where natural bear foods are scarcer. Up here, bears without frequent access to human sources of food don’t reach breeding age until age five or six, they have smaller litters, and their litters are more widely spaced. Black bear populations with these characteristics can sustain much lower levels of harvest, only about 13-15 percent according to Bunnel and Tait, and that assumes average conditions. According to Andrew Tri, one of the DNR’s top bear researchers, the current harvest level in the quota zone, which includes a large swath of central, northcentral, and northeastern Minnesota, is running around 15 percent, although DNR data suggests that percentage has averaged closer to 18 percent the past three seasons (see the chart above). Even at 15 percent, it’s distinctly on the high side of what is sustainable for bear populations in our area, and it certainly is not a recipe for bear population recovery, which is currently one of the DNR’s goals, at least publicly. The DNR is supposed to be managing for bear recovery in large part due to prior DNR management decisions, which cut the state’s bear population nearly in half between 2000 and 2010. Back then, the DNR was issuing around 20,000 permits a year and annual harvests were averaging about 3,500 animals, most of that in the quota zone. Back in 2000, the DNR, using a variety of models, estimated the state’s bear population at between 20,000 and 25,000 animals. After a decade of high harvest, the state’s bear population had fallen to between 10,000-15,000. The DNR slashed the number of bear permits dramatically beginning in 2012 in an effort to reverse course, but progress toward a recovery has been very slow, and has very likely gone backward in the past couple years, when poor bear foods led to harvests close to what we saw back in the 2000s. It should be noted that more of the state’s harvest is now coming from the state’s no-quota zone, which includes those parts of the state to the south and west of the quota zone, where bears are more of a management problem due to the presence of agriculture and greater incidence of human conflict in general. As permit availability, now around 3,500, plummeted in the quota zone, making permits much more difficult to obtain, more hunters have opted to try their luck elsewhere. The reduction in permits in the quota zone has led to a lower bear harvest to be sure, but nowhere near the reduction that might be expected given that permits were slashed from 20,000 to under 4,000. Bear hunter success rates have gone up as well, and that’s limited the beneficial impact of lower permit numbers. It’s also worth noting that hunters are now taking bears from a population that is much reduced. If you take 3,000 animals from a population of 20,000 bears, it’s the same in percentage terms as taking 1,500 bears from a population of 10,000. Because wildlife population modeling is inexact, and because the DNR doesn’t model by bear management area, we don’t know if there’s been any recovery of bear numbers in management areas 25 and 31, which, combined, encompass virtually all of the Shield country in Minnesota that sees any appreciable numbers of hunters. But there’s reason to believe that the harvest may still be outstripping the ability of the population to maintain itself here. Indeed, DNR officials acknowledge as much. The situation today is probably even worse than we know. Given the recent trend of poorer food years, it’s not clear that the bear population on Minnesota’s Shield country can sustain much of a bear harvest at all. In years of successive poor foods, like we’ve seen in recent years, research from Montana suggests that black bear reproduction can fall to near zero. Research in Minnesota finds a similar pattern. Bears are among a number of species that have evolved with delayed implantation of embryos. They breed in the late spring or early summer, but the fertilized eggs don’t implant in a female bear’s womb until November or December. If the female didn’t put on enough weight during the previous summer, those eggs simply don’t implant. Bear reproduction has likely fallen off sharply in our region during the past two years, and this coincides with some of the highest bear harvests we’ve had since the DNR reduced the permits. That’s one of the problems with managing black bear populations, particularly for recovery. It isn’t easy. When foods are scarce, bears are more susceptible to hunters’ baits, so that means the harvest goes up at a time when reproduction is likely going to fall. In years of repeated poor foods, such as we’ve seen recently, the problem compounds. And climate change may be a factor, here. We’ve seen a significant trend of more extreme temperature swings and greater variability in precipitation and it’s those extremes that have been impacting wild foods in our area. Early spring green-ups, followed by killing frosts in June, can wipe out berry crops. Droughts impact virtually everything. These are factors that have impacted natural foods the past 2-3 years and have undoubtedly affected bear reproduction. If the DNR isn’t reducing its permits to respond, the agency is putting the region’s bear population at even greater risk. The other alternative would be to prohibit or greatly restrict bear baiting in management areas where bears are struggling. That’s not as outlandish as it might sound. Twenty-eight states in the U.S. have bear seasons, and only 11, including Minnesota, allow hunting directly over baits. We’ve gotten used to the practice here, because it’s easy for hunters, but in most places it’s not allowed. And a few bear hunters in Minnesota don’t rely on baits even today. While the DNR focuses much of its attention on hunters, there are other people out there who actually like to see bears in the wild. I’m one of them, and I know I see a lot fewer bears than I used to. How do the DNR’s black bear management efforts meet the wishes of folks who’d like to see a few more bears out there in the woods? Not very well it would seem.

BEARS OF THE WORLD CLICK bear image to see more details Andean or spectacled bear (Tremarctus ornatus) Andean bears are South America's only bears and live in a variety of mountain habitats. Also known as the spectacled bear for the rings of white or light fur around its eyes, which can look like eyeglasses (or spectacles) against the rest of the bear's black or dark brown fur. American black bear (Ursus americanus) This North American bear is medium-sized, usually black with a brown muzzle, lacks a shoulder hump, and often has a white patch on the chest. Black bears inhabit forests of coniferous and deciduous trees, as well as open alpine habitats where there are no brown bears. Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus) This bear’s scientific name literally means "moon bear of Tibet." It is a medium sized bear, jet black fur with a thick mane-like ruff around their neck. In addition to the yellow moon on their chest, they have a brown or tan muzzle and a whitish chin. They live in the heavily forested mountainous areas and moist tropical forests in southern Asia. Brown bear (Ursus arctos) Brown bears are the most widely distributed bears in the world. They are found in North America, Europe, and Asia. Brown bears have a bulky muscle mass located above the shoulders. This hump is designed to power the forelimbs and makes them exceptionally powerful diggers. This is one of the features that distinguishes them from the more common North American black bear which lacks such a shoulder hump. Giant panda (Ailuropoda melanolueca) The giant panda’s scientific name means black and white bear. Giant pandas have a distinctive black and white coat, with black fur around their eyes and on their ears, muzzle, legs and shoulders. Their thick, wooly coat helps to keep them warm in their cool mountain homes. Polar bear (Ursus maritimus) The polar bear is the largest species of all bears. Found in Arctic regions they are considered to be marine mammals. In fact, Ursus maritimus (the polar bear's binomial name) means "sea bear." They are excellent swimmers and can swim up to 60 miles without rest. Sloth bear (Melursus ursinus) Sloth bears have a long shaggy, black coat with a white or yellow V shaped marking on their chest. At an early age they lose their 2 front upper incisors, creating a very useful gap through which they can suck insects. Sun bear (Helarctos malyanus) The Sun bear is smallest bear species in the world whose name is derived from the golden colored crescent shaped patch of fur on its chest. It is also known as the honey bear because of its extreme fondness of honey.

f4520028-f9cf-436b-808c-748b1d46ae9e < Back Slide 68 of 83 < > For example, this cub fell when she climbed higher onto the smooth bark of this aspen. The same thing happened to her two brothers.

88620b24-56d5-4fad-a953-61710f98a6cc < Back Slide 32 of 83 < > The disease had its worst effects anywhere in the nation right here in northeastern Minnesota where cool, moist summers make white pines especially susceptible because rust spores, to enter the needles, need 48 hours of continuous moisture on the needles at temperatures below 68 degrees. That kind of weather is common in northeastern Minnesota in late summer when the spores are in the air.