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ALL BEAR SPECIES All Bear Species

2330f528-915e-4ec0-bded-41a46413812c < Back Slide 48 of 83 < > The scarcity of these trees makes each individual more valuable as a seed tree and as habitat, but it also makes them more needed by local sawmill operators who are running out of them.

ADOLESCENT BEARS Understanding Yearling and Adolescent Black Bear Behaviors Black bear yearlings come in all shapes, sizes and personalities, but they all have two things in common, an adolescent brain and limited experience in the world. On top of that, they are naturally a very intelligent and inquisitive animal. In the black bear world, cubs are born while the mom is denned in January. They leave the den in March or April and stay with mom, while learning the about the world until May or June of the next year when family breakup occurs. Family breakup happens suddenly in May or June when mom is nearly ready to mate, triggered by a rise in hormones. Family bonds remain strong right up to the day of family breakup. In the days before family breakup, they play together, groom each other, sleep together, and suckle. Like human youngsters, yearling bears sleep very soundly, trusting their safety to the alertness of their mother. Then, suddenly, mom chases them away. If the yearlings refuse to leave, they are continuously chased off and possibly swiped at by mom, causing minor injuries, til they get the idea that mom no longer wants them around. Family breakup can be traumatic and could possibly be pivotal for how yearlings react to other bears and situations for their entire lives. Black bear yearlings are about 16 months old when they are set free on the world in this way. Just like human adolescents, this population has outliers. Some yearlings are terrified of the world when family breakup occurs and spend the entire first month of their freedom in a tree, coming down only to eat and drink-at a fast run while on the ground. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the yearlings that were ready to leave mom half way through their first summer as cubs-who needs mom, right? Then you have have those in the middle of the fear factor range. Every bear’s personality is different, so each young black bear handles family breakup in their own way, with different degrees of fear, or lack thereof, leading the way. To the black bear yearling, the world is new, scary, exciting and dangerous. There are many things to explore, and unfortunately, they have to make many mistakes to figure out how it works. When you add in having friends in the same “mom-free” situation as you, every day can be full of non-stop playing, eating, sleeping, swimming, and exploring-alone or in small groups. Yearling brothers Doug and Jim begin playing. 2-year-old Ty and yearling Boy join in. Older, bigger Ty manages to wear the younger bears out one by one. All in good fun! My favorite neighborhood tale is when a resident had their clothes on a clothesline. Picture being of “young black bear mind” and never seeing such a sight before. Wouldn’t you want to check it out and play with it to figure out what it is? Well, this resident watched as a group of yearlings decided this was an amazing opportunity to play with those mysterious objects flapping in the breeze. Upon seeing what was being done to her clean laundry, the resident marched out to save it. She grabbed the clothes off the clothesline and walked back to the house with them. This situation ended in a priceless vision of a parade, consisting of a woman followed by several yearlings-who couldn’t understand why their new playthings were being taken away-marching to the house. Young black bears can be mischievous, curious, and get into things and will investigate most things “new” in their world. Put anything you don’t want them to have inside. Keep in mind they are young, playful, mom-free for the first time and they are all figuring out their own way in the world.

9b39d39c-a1ee-48ba-905e-41df8a3dbaed < Back Slide 45 of 83 < > Compared to other states, Minnesota has gone from first to last in white pine lumber production. For example, Minnesota started with twice as much white pine as New Hampshire but now has only a 20th as much. New Hampshire and other eastern states manage their white pines on a nearly sustainable basis and now produce 99 percent of the nation's white pine lumber. There's no nationwide shortage of white pine lumber, but there is a shortage in Minnesota where overharvest has reduced our output to the point where Minnesota now produces less than one percent of the nation's white pine lumber.

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8b1cf46a-f11f-44d6-bff4-482c5786021b < Back Pounce and slap = nervous uncertainty When a bear is uncertain, it often lunges toward the possible danger, slaps the ground or a tree, and blows. It’s just part of assessing whether to run or stay.

October 23, 2024 Tolkkinen: Why I lost my fear of black bears A little curiosity and listening goes a long way toward understanding another creature. By Karen Tolkkinen The Minnesota Star Tribune October 23, 2024 at 7:00AM Lucky the bear was found begging for food as a cub near Wisconsin. He came within an hour of being euthanized, but found refuge at the North American Bear Center in Ely. (North American Bear Center) ELY, Minn. – Can you stand one more take on the “man versus bear” debate? You hear a lot of women saying they’d rather be alone in the woods with a bear, not a man, because they considered the man to be more dangerous. I always chose the man, because my interactions with men have generally been positive, and a man wandering through the woods seemed likely to be a hunter or a naturalist or just someone out enjoying nature. Someone reasonable. Someone more likely to harbor a save-the-maiden fantasy than a desire to harm. Bears, on the other hand, if they have it in their head to attack, there is little you could do but try to survive. A recent visit to Ely’s North American Bear Center changed my mind. Not that I think less of men, but that I think more of bears. Black bears, at least. The Bear Center provides refuge to three black bears, at least one of whom would have been otherwise euthanized. There’s Lucky, abandoned or orphaned as a cub, who was begging for food near Madison, Wis., and who came within an hour of being put down before a rescuer whisked him off to Ely. There’s Tasha, fat, sleek, and gorgeous, discovered in 2015 in Kentucky trying to nurse on her dead mother, who was believed to have been hit by a vehicle. And Holly, separated from her mother during an Arkansas fire, and who had slipped off to hibernate before our visit. The bears were fascinating, delicately lipping up cranberries and shelling out nuts with their back teeth during our visit. We learned that their sense of smell is seven times stronger than that of a bloodhound, and that they can smell through an organ on the roof of their mouths. In fact, sometimes they’ll stand erect and open their mouths – which looks threatening, but it’s really just to get a better sense of their surroundings, said Spencer Peter, assistant director and biologist at the center. Hollywood trains them to stand like that for movies, he said. “But they’ll dub in the sound.” The thing that most changed my mind about black bears was learning that North American Bear Center researchers have never been able to provoke an attack, not even from a mama bear with cubs. Lynn Rogers, the center’s founder who has been researching black bears for most of his 87 years, even tried to provoke an attack by picking up a cub, Peter said. “She still wouldn’t,” Peter said. “They were more likely to grab the other cubs and leave.” During our visit, a wildlife educator told our group that black bears have a prey, not predator, mindset. They were once fed upon by fierce predators like giant short-faced bears, dire wolves, and saber-toothed cats, which lived in North America for hundreds of thousands of years before going extinct about 10,000 years ago. “None of those animals could climb, so the black bear could flee up a tree,” Peter said. Ironically, the shy, timid black bears were the ones to survive, whereas the bolder bears succumbed to predators, Peter says. The shy bears passed their genes on to their offspring, resulting in today’s timid animals. Climbing a tree remains their go-to escape route. They’re also pretty easy to chase off. A billowing black plastic garbage bag will send them scampering from a campsite. It’s amazing how a little education is able to change a person’s mind about a perceived threat. Much of what we think we know about black bears wasn’t challenged until Rogers began doing his research. Bear attack stories make for sensational reading. Humans like to be scared. Fear sells. We like to have something to fight, something that keeps us on guard, something that makes us shudder. After all, as Peter points out, it’s more fun to tell about the bear that broke through your cabin window and ate all the sandwiches than about the bear that ran off into the brush the minute you pulled into your driveway. But bears suffer the price for the horror stories, sometimes ending up dead, although Peter thinks that the presence of the Bear Center has helped save their lives. People think that when bears pop their jaws or clack their teeth that they’re being aggressive, whereas it really indicates that they’re feeling anxious. When you learn that, your own fear melts. How can you hate or fear something that is so afraid of you? When fear subsides, compassion begins. Black bears do sometimes kill people. There are 750,000 in North America, and they kill less than one person per year on average. Most fatal black bear encounters take place in remote areas, by bears that may have never seen a human. You are more likely to die from bee or hornet stings or dog attacks, Peter says. Men ages 18 to 24 are 167 times more likely to kill someone than a black bear would be, the Bear Center says. So. Black bear versus man in the woods? You know, I would be comfortable with either. Karen Tolkkinen Columnist Karen Tolkkinen is a columnist for the Star Tribune, focused on the issues and people of greater Minnesota.

22363732-cf89-4057-a7c1-79921af36867 The Wishing Bear (Kids Book) "This charming story about the bond between a mother black bear and her cub will delight readers of all ages. Jennifer Dziekan opens our hearts to black bears. Her charming illustrations and endearing text remind me of the care and concern I've seen wild black bear mothers give to their cubs." Lynn L. Rogers, Ph.D. Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center ~ Also contains facts about bears... Jennifer Dziekan January 1, 2006 26 Pages:

1d4f24d1-782d-44ca-bcdc-ab4ed90f62f3 < Back Eating Snow To get water, mothers ate snow. Previous Next

02132f11-d677-498e-9fa6-62f68f038cf8 < Back Sounds of Conflict Bears make a deep-throated pulsing sound when they are very distressed.

3b22da8f-85cb-4df4-ad01-2778ecd6c401 < Back Slide 20 of 83 < > Branches were trimmed from entire forests and left to dry out and become fuel.

467acb8d-3213-488c-81bc-6c3100260588 BLACK BEAR DIET Coralroot Orchid Corallorhiza spp. Occasionally Eaten Black bears eat the fleshy roots of the coralroot orchid occasionally. These orchids grow in Alpine or subalpine zones, bogs, disturbed habitats(ie: clear cut or fire), forests, meadows, swamps, tundra, woodlands.