Prevention’s the cure in bear country
Friday, September 17, 2010
A bear makes itself at home on a residential driveway Sunday on Park Street in Leavenworth.
Bear encounters
Preventing them
• Never feed bears.
• Keep garbage cans in a bear-proof area until collection day.
• Don’t leave pet food outside.
• Thoroughly clean barbecue grills after each use.
• Take down birdfeeders until later in summer.
• When camping, thoroughly clean all cooking utensils and seal uneaten food in airtight containers stored in bear-proof canisters away from sleeping areas.
What to do if you see a bear
• Don’t run.
• Pick up small children.
• Stand tall, wave your arms above your head and shout.
• Don’t approach the bear and leave it an escape route.
• Get upwind of the bear so it can identify you as a human and leave.
Source: Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
LEAVENWORTH — When it comes to black bears, an ounce of prevention can be worth a few hundred pounds of cure.
That’s the average weight of an adult black bear — four of which have been killed near Leavenworth and Plain in the past four months.
Officials say all of those deaths could have been prevented. Bears were attracted to people’s yards by birdseed, garbage cans, pet food and even molasses.
Across the West, bears are making their way into residential areas looking to fill their bellies before heading into their dens for the winter.
They’re loading up on calories, and a shortage of wild huckleberries and other natural foods this year may be driving them into some of the more populated areas.
But this year’s bad berry season isn’t the whole story in Leavenworth, where black bears are always part of the fall scenery. It’s prime bear country — some of the best in the state — and that’s not going to change.
Some people know they live in bear habitat, and have taken measures to avoid an unpleasant encounter.
“I think people need to know that, most of us, really, want to stay within our boundary so the animals can stay within ours,” said Marycarol Nelson, who lives on Icicle Road.
It didn’t take her long after she moved here 16 years ago to begin keeping her garbage in the garage until the morning it’s collected, she said. She keeps her bird feeder high off a balcony on the second story.
“I hate to yell and scare them away, but I do it. It’s for their own safety,” she said.
This year, she came home one day to find a bear had climbed on top of her grape arbor.
So she made a scarecrow, with a solar light for its head, and put a battery-operated radio in its pocket, hoping the noise would keep the bear in the woods.
“The next morning, I looked out, and my scarecrow was still lying on the chair,” she said. But in the tree beyond the scarecrow, she could see a black bear sleeping peacefully in the branches.
“So the only thing I did was feed him the grapes, and give him soft music to sleep with,” she mused. When he came down into the yard, “I took a picture, quick, and then said, “You get back into the woods. Go. Go!”
Across the river at All Seasons River Inn, Dale Wells said many of the people who stay at his bed and breakfast aren’t familiar with wild animals, particularly bears. “We say to the guests, ‘Please, don’t put coolers or food bags or anything outside on their patios,’ that sort of thing,” he said.
After years without problems, the Lake Wenatchee State Park is again having troubles with bears raiding their dumpsters. This year, park Manager Rick Halstead got a paint-ball rifle, and is ready to shoot a bear with paint the next time he sees one with its head in the garbage bin.
A park in southeastern Washington has had some success with this — the paint ball apparently stings enough to put the bear on the run, he said.
“We’re just trying to make them not have a pleasant experience,” he said. Bear-proof dumpsters are the next option, but it will cost tens of thousands of dollars to replace the park’s 15 dumpsters, Halstead said.
Taylor Solem, who works in the pro shop at the Leavenworth Gold Club, said they see black bears every day, out on the course, and in the trees surrounding it. But they haven’t had any unpleasant encounters.
“We make sure people take the right steps as to safety, and tell them not to mess with the bears at all. Not to feed them,” he said.
The golf course now has bear-safe dumpsters, he said, and also put in a bear-proof enclosure last year to hold garbage at the nearby Wild Huckleberry, leased to restaurant owner Angie Decker.
“They definitely got into a lot of the garbage last year, but they put the enclosure up toward the end of last year, and the bears haven’t gotten into it yet,” Decker said.
Garbage is also usually the issue in city limits of Leavenworth.
Public Works Director Dave Schettler said bears rarely come into the downtown area, but they have been spotted on the outskirts of town.
Unfortunately, new plastic dumpsters can’t be chained and locked to prevent bears from getting in, like the old metal ones could.
But, Schettler added, if a bear really wants something, even a lock and chain won’t keep him out. “We don’t have a policy that everybody should have bear-proof container,” he added.
Rich Beausoleil, bear and cougar specialist for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, said Leavenworth revamped its garbage system without contacting his agency.
“It would have been so good to know that, and say, ‘Let’s make these a little more bear resistant.’ We missed out on that,” he said.
Because of the bad berry crop, bears will be moving around a lot more, but if there’s nothing for them to eat, they’ll keep moving.
Sgt. Doug Ward, the Fish and Wildlife officer in Chelan County, said bears have been a major problem in and around Leavenworth for the past four years. He’s not sure whether there are more bears, or more people, or both.
Two bears have been hit by cars outside of Leavenworth so far this year, he said. Last year cars hit four.
Bird feeders are among the biggest problems, he said. That’s because many people aren’t willing to give them up, not even for the summer.
“If you can’t remove the attractant, you’re not going to get rid of the bears,” he said. “This is like 80 percent a people problem. The bears aren’t there because they like people.”
K.C. Mehaffey: 997-2512
mehaffey@wenatcheeworld.com
» 17 comments on this story
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Comments
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carol 2 years, 8 months ago
Yes, and maybe we will have fewer orphaned cubs being euthanized.
2 years, 8 months ago
Earth to Mr. Ward, Earth to Mr. Ward, we have a bear, cougar, and deer problem in Chelan County. Put down your teddy bear and come in please. Hello?
2 years, 8 months ago
What to do if you see a bear
• Don’t run. Just stand there and make like a tree!
• Pick up small children AND THEN run like hell! Shout commands to big children in a calm voice. Say something like, "Run for your life!" or "Fend for yourself!"
• Stand tall, wave your arms above your head and shout--EXCEPT you cannot do this when carrying small children and running like hell!
• Don’t approach the bear and leave it an escape route. Be sure to do this when running like hell in the opposite direction while carrying small children!
• Get upwind of the bear so it can identify you as a human and leave. This may prove difficult to do if you are already carrying small children and running like hell! After all, wetting a finger to test the direction of the wind would cause you to drop the small children!
Source: Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.....that figures.
2 years, 8 months ago
If Doug Ward and his department refuse to address the obvious and I mean the obvious increase in bear sightings, cougar sightings, and even deer sightings, then he deserves to lose his job! No more excuses, Mr. Ward! Are you going to wait until a child is harmed???
lonedog3 2 years, 8 months ago
And I quote “If you can’t remove the attractant, you’re not going to get rid of the bears,” he said. “This is like 80 percent a people problem. The bears aren’t there because they like people.” So If humans are 80 per cent of the problen lets just get rid of the people living in the bears woods?? If they cannot and or refuse to obey the laws of nature to prevent encounters don't let them live there. Gosh, at least 80% of whats wrong with this planet is directly linked to people not the animals.
2 years, 8 months ago
Like I said, the people in that area pay taxes. They expect to receive something in the way of services and protection for paying those taxes. Mr. Ward's job is entirely funded with tax dollars. It's his responsibility to step up to the plate before another adult gets seriously hurt or much worse. The people aren't going away. They are there now and you can argue that they should all know better, but some of them don't and some of them will never ever learn no matter how much you cram education down their throats. That's the nature of the human condition. It's why young people continue to smoke and chew tobacco after all of the evidence has been in for decades. Some people are just unteachable and that's a fact! That said, you are not relieved of your ethical and moral responsibility to human beings that are too stupid to know better. If those same people have paid their taxes and still forget to keep their garbage in a bear-proof container, they still deserve commensurate services and protection from dangerous wildlife and it is Mr. Ward's obligation to deliver on that protection and either figure out how and where to relocate excess animals or to issue additional kill permits to reduce their overall numbers. It's his responsibility to manage wildlife populations. That's what his job description is. That's what he gets paid to do and it's high time he follows through.
2 years, 8 months ago
Joe, keep in mind you are quoting Mr. Ward. He wants to pass the buck. He wants to blame people because he doesn't want to tackle the problem. It's far easier for him to blame someone else. That excuse will no longer pass muster if someone gets injured again or if a child is killed the next time around. The numbers of cougars, bears, etc., have been building for quite sometime and so have the confrontations with humans. How much longer is Mr. Ward going to just sit there and blame taxpayers--aka the hand that feeds him--for that?
DanielSon33 2 years, 8 months ago
Mavulous, I'm having a hard time actually believing someone like you could possibly be serious about every statement you make. A better explanation is that you have some sort of personal beef with Mr. Ward, due to your comments on multiple threads about his job description that you seem to know soooo much about. The truth is, relocating as you have suggested in other threads will not fix the "problem" that isn't a problem at all. You can only put so much water in a cup. If you catch the over flow and pour it back into the same cup, water will continue to overflow. Relocation of animals, all species works the same way. The only thing we have is education, and hopes that people can start to learn from others mistakes, misfortunes, and down right bad luck.
2 years, 8 months ago
joanne 2 years, 8 months ago
Wow, Mav. You are really riled up.And possibly rightly so. I'm not making a judgment on this. I do know that living anywhere has changed in the last century. Humans are dominant now, and as such, have taken over land that was once dominated by these very bears, cougars and other wildlife, and early people had to be very careful and defend themselves from them. Now that people are dominant, with weapons of what the animals would call "mass destruction", they can take over the other animals territories. Unfortunately, the animals don't seem to understand that we have these weapons and thus they should stay away from us.
It seems to me--and please pardon the apparent simplicity of this--that we have choices. If we want to live near the wild life which could potentially harm us, we need to be wary, and take every precaution to see that they have no reason to attack us.
Or, if we want to live in and near areas which are desirable to us, but do not want to be on watch and careful of attracting this wild life, we can take our weapons and remove the threateining wild life from the area. We are carnivores, and we do eat meat which we buy (already neatly killed, dressed and packaged at the store) so there should be no fuss about eating bear. It is related to pig, and is very tasty.
Yes, this is too simplistic, but simple minds often bring forth simple solutions.
2 years, 8 months ago
2 years, 8 months ago
Wahhhhh Mav cry me a river.If you don't like bears attacking humans then have respect for them and stop encroaching on their habitat.With your kind of thinking we will not have any wilderness left in the next 20 years.It will all be private land with homes and orchards on it.
If you don't like it then go move to the concrete jungle.One things for sure.You'll be more of a target or better yet prey for a human predator there then you will in the woods by a bear or mountain lion.
2 years, 8 months ago
2 years, 7 months ago
mavulous (mav ulous) says...
I have far more respect for bears then I have for you.
That's ok because I have zero respect for whiners like you.If you had any respect you would stop the insults,stick to the issues at hand,or just shut your trap.
2 years, 7 months ago
macs3366 2 years, 7 months ago
Quit Whining about the game wardens. They don't make the rules. The westside city slickers do, that want our eastside rivers for fly fishing only so they have some place to recreate or a vacation home in bear and cougar country. (mav) you sound like you were raised in the forty's in kansas. Wake up ToTo your not in Kansas anymore. Your in Bear, Cougar, Deer, and Elk Country.
Peace and Love
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