Buncombe County Government, NC PSA's - Public Service Announcements, 28 Jun 2011

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From YouTube: Help Keep Bears Wild - Coexisting with Bears

Description

The black bear population in Buncombe County is growing, which means there are more bears looking for food. When bears discover food that is easy to access and high in fat or calories, they will continue to return to that food source. Many people are unintentionally teaching bears that they can provide them with food, such as garbage, bird seed, and dog food. Bears become conditioned to return to a site that provides a great food source. NC Wildlife Resources Commission Officer, Mike Carraway, explains steps to take to ward off bears if you live in a bear habitat or if there are bears in your neighborhood. Suggestions are to take down bird feeders, keep trash/garbage in a secure place such as indoors or secure/locked container, pick up fruit from fruit trees and do not leave pet food outside. If you see a bear in your yard, make lots of noise to scare it to let him know he is not welcome. Two Black Mountain residents, Anne Oxenreider and Allen Arcand, explain their encounters with bears in their yard and the steps they have taken to distract the bears. For more information, visit townofblackmountain.org

A

Cubs learn their behavior from their mother and when their mother is eating, food is habituated to human foods. Then that's what the cubs learn and as they grow older, they will be habituated to human foods as well. Isn't that right.

B

The second year we were here, we had our bird feeder out and it's a tall bird feeder and one morning at three o'clock, our dog sammy, woke us up was barking. So I came out on the porch with a flashlight and I saw a bear out there at the bird feeder and he or she had pulled the bird feeder down and was just shoveling the birdseed in its mouth. It was sitting back on its haunches.

B

The next day we went out to the bird feeder and the post that holds the bird feeder in the ground, which is solid, steel. The bird feeder post had been bent, so it was pretty big, bear pretty powerful.

A

So if you live in bear habitat or if there's bear activity in your neighborhood, this is a bear feeder. A bear can knock this right down and get all the seed out of it and it's very nutritious for bears. They love bird feeders. So if you live in a area with bear activity, you need to take the bird feeders down because they are also bare feeders.

C

Just really discouraging to come out in the morning and find your garbage out. It gets strewn up in the woods and you have to get it out, and so we built a wood box, didn't really think quite yet to go to the metal box and we just went to henson's and got super treated wood and built this thing at first. We had a latch down here, so we could open it up and you know get the garbage cans out easy to clean it.

C

But that was just easy for the bears to do too so we've had to screw it shut, but they still do get in and we've had boards pulled off. But basically what we've decided to do is during the times that we see them a lot. We do just keep the garbage in the basement and put it out here the morning that the trash pickup happens, and we just prefer to handle it that way, instead of picking it up off the lane.

C

So but you know that's, maybe that's, maybe four or five weeks out of the year that we really have to go to that extent to keep them from messing around.

A

This is bear food. If you leave trash out overnight, a bear is going to find it sooner or later. If you live in, bear country and a bear will get this and scatter it all over the neighborhood. So if you live in an area where there's bear activity or close to bear habitat, you need to put the garbage in an enclosed garage or storage area or keep it in the house until you haul it off, don't leave it outside overnight.

C

One thing that I'm not quite as clear about doing- and I worry about- is that I keep my dog in the yard and if I see a bear in the yard with my dog, I want to do whatever. I can obviously to protect her when a dog a bear actually has had an encounter with my dog in the past, and I wasn't there and she's fine, but it's unnerving.

C

And so what do I do if there's a bear in the yard and my dog's there and I don't want to- and I want to aggravate the bear. But I want it to go away fast.

A

If you see a bear, discourage it in any way that you can, by yelling at it or making a lot of noise just to let the bear know that he's not welcome.

C

We've had to figure out how to keep the bears from coming.

C

We really love having fruit trees and don't want to give that up, but they really do seem to attract them, particularly when the fruit's in season, obviously, and so as much as possible- try to keep the fruit that falls off off the ground, but the time that we ran into the biggest trouble was when we were away during the summer on vacation- and I had someone coming to the house for the dog, but didn't ask them to pick up the fruit and sure enough bears came down and were eating, and my mom actually saw them here at the trees and, of course left.

C

But then, when she came back later, they had stripped several branches, pretty big areas all from down here off the tree, so they're really just starting to come back now, after after a couple years of looking pretty straggly. So so that's discouraging- and you know you want to have things going on in your yard, but you don't want to attract, bears either.

A

This little fella was orphaned, we don't know what happened to his mother, but he was orphaned and a lot of times when bears get habituated to human food sources and they come around houses and neighborhoods life becomes dangerous for them, and sometimes they get hit by cars. Sometimes they get shot by people who are afraid of them. There are all kinds of things that can happen, and sometimes that leaves little cubs like this one orphaned.

A

The best way to avoid this to keep this from happening is to remove food sources, take down bird feeders to remove trash or secure it in places where bears can't get to them and not leave pet food outside those are the things that brings bears into neighborhoods and into town and that's what we need to do to keep bears safe and to keep people safe, don't feed the bears. A fed bear is a dead.

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