In May, forest news headlines report an annual spike in New Hampshire wildlife sightings. Turtles seek warm, sandy sites to lay leathery eggs. Hummingbirds arrive at feeders. Pink lady slipper orchids bloom. Mosquito hordes emerge. And bears – LOTS of bears – suddenly appear in even heavily developed regions of the state.
While there are ample supplies of natural foods in the forest, suburban neighborhoods offer attractive amenities to wandering bruins. In many cases of bears in close proximity to people, the motivation is birdseed: black oil sunflower seeds. When bears leave the woods, they cross roads and traverse neighborhoods where they rile barking dogs and climb backyard trees to reach birdfeeders or decks to reach garbage cans, pet food bowls and barbecue grills. People inadvertently attract bears to unnatural food supplies. Other people intentionally feed bears. Sows with first year cubs teach their offspring bad habits to which adolescents return in subsequent years.
Human-bear conflicts and nuisance bear complaints increase in suburban areas when homeowners inadvertently attract bears. To better manage bears, wildlife officials annually educate people so bears don’t habituate themselves to food and learn bad habits. The N.H. Fish and Game Department’s popular “Something’s Bruin” campaign reminds homeowners “a fed bear is a dead bear.”
May begins the mating season for New Hampshire bears. During their every-other-year breeding season, female “sows” enter estrus after leaving or driving-off adolescent two year old cubs. Twin cubs are typical. Bear cubs born in dens in January 2012 spent last summer with their mothers and shared a den this past winter. In this second spring, sows leave adolescent cubs to fend for themselves and prepare to breed again. Breeding sows this year last mated in June 2011. Male “boars” breed every year - if they can.
Adolescents, particularly the males now disperse to establish new territories while avoiding conflict with older dominant males who are busy defending territory and seeking mates. Young boars are interlopers in pre-occupied territory and they must travel warily to avoid conflicts. Dominant boars tolerate young sows that will mature to become part of a regional harem. The home range for a dominant boar can be fifty square miles in good quality habitat to one hundred square miles in poor habitat. Sows typically occupy a home range of five to twenty square miles. Thus, home range of a boar may potentially overlap ranges occupied by dozens of sows.
Adolescents and mothers with first-year cubs, breeding males and females are all actively travelling, feeding, mating, defending and maintaining territories and escaping threats posed by larger, dominant bears. This annual frenzy of bear movement results in an inevitable increase in reported sightings by late May.
Bears are particularly fond of hillsides and ridge locations. They frequent forests along saddles connecting hilltops. A decade ago, Forest Service biologists studying bear habitat preferences determined that bears preferentially feed in autumn in beech forests located on remote hillsides and along ridges. With an acute sense of smell and relatively limited eyesight, black bears rely on air currents to provide strategic, olfactory views of the surroundings.
If there’s a readily available food source nearby – beechnuts, acorns, a cornfield, birdfeeders, a barbecue grill or dumpster – bears will smell it. When hikers with dogs approach from one side of a ridge, bears flee down the opposite side before the threat is near enough to see or hear. Mountainous topography provides a strategic advantage because bears constantly sniff air currents conveying up-to-the-minute news headlines. The topographic “scent-scape” influences bear travel corridors and preferred feeding and resting locations.
The travel corridors connecting large blocks of farms and forestland are important in regions fragmented by roads and residential development. Crowds of people in more urban areas frighten bears up neighborhood trees or even utility poles. Typically, bears climb down and return to the forest after people leave. Binoculars are the safest and most responsible way to enjoy New Hampshire bears from a safe distance.
If you are fortunate enough to see a bear in your neighborhood, give it space. NH Fish and Game authorities annually remind residents that wild animals have the best chance of surviving when they are left alone in their natural habitat.
Naturalist Dave Anderson is Director of Education and Volunteer Services for The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests. His column appears once a month in the New Hampshire Sunday News. E-mail him at danderson@forestsociety.org or through the Forest Society Web site: forestsociety.org.