Return of the Nuisance Black Bear - Fulton County, Pennsylvania!

For the second time in three weeks, Snowball, the little silky hen, sounded the alarm with her excited cries. Looking out the south window, I saw a black bear only about 30 feet from the house. There he stood on his hind legs, reaching into the shambles of the chicken-coop and what was left over from his last destructive visit to kill chickens. But snowball was not at home! She had been strolling around the yard enjoying the late summer afternoon with her infant twins when she saw his approach. He was not at all ruffled by her noises and instead turned and lumbered straight to the window where I stood just out of sight and watching.

In the wrong place!

If the bear had been strolling around the yard in the middle of the night, his visit would be going unnoticed, but now, he's not fearful of human scent which makes him brave enough to walk around the yard in daylight hours. The nearby neighbor's dumpsters are feeding the bear well and he likes the fast food. Fast food bears are much larger than the wild food, acorn-diet bears.

Fulton County, Pennsylvania's black bears and human contact!

Pennsylvania's black bears are coming into human contact more and more as the wooded wild areas turn into housing developments. Is the black bear really becoming the "bear next door" as the concern was voiced recently on the NGW tv program, "The Ultimate Bear?"

How about a black bear's sense of smell?

There is an old Indian proverb that goes ... "A pine needle falls in the forest and an eagle sees it, a deer hears it and a bear smells it..."

Dog noses!

Dog noses are thought to be more sensitive than ours, and some experts believe a bear can smell many times better than a bloodhound. So that candy bar wrapper stuffed under the car seat with all the windows rolled up might still get the windows broken out!

Lots of black bears!

Over 200,000 black bears live in 39 of the lower 48 states. That's a lot of bear! For some reason black bears don't infuse much fear and they don't fear very many things which would explain the black bear strolling around the yard in daylight and because of their natural camouflaged colorations in fur, they can become hidden well and very fast in the woods brush and vegetation.

The Fulton County black bear's claws!

A black bears claws are like crampons. Designed to "hook" onto tree bark, this feature makes them great acrobats that can almost "run" up a tree.

Black bear encounters can be deadly!

In the Cherokee National Forest recreation area, Chatanooga, Tennessee, 2006, a black bear savagely attacked and killed a 6 year old child and mauled the mother and brother. Black bears can easily turn predator!

Wildlife management!

Some states have wildlife management teams that insert tracking chips/tags onto every bear and cub so they can watch and record their wanderings. Could this black bear be a relocated nuisance bear from another area?

The survival of free-ranging wild black bears and humans requires lots of space for the bears and dense woodlands to thrive and raise their cubs!

Sources:

Personal experience
"The Ultimate bear" NGW-tv August 29 - 2010