![]() ![]() “Most bears that wander into a residential area will quickly retreat to their natural habitat, particularly if no food source is around. #BEAR PAW PRINT HOW TO#The natural rule of cause and effect is evident - bears and people are now meeting each other with alarming frequency.Ĭolleen Olfenbuttel, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission black bear biologist, offers advice about how to coexist with black bears. As a result, bears are feeling the pinch and beginning to roam beyond their traditional environment. With human expansion comes urban development, and much of that development is ever closer to rural bear range. ![]() While bear numbers are on the rise, so are human numbers, especially on the East Coast near historical bear territory. A wildlife biologist could not have designed a better home for bears than eastern North Carolina, and as a result populations are increasing each year. Bears are omnivores, and they happily eat anything that blooms, crawls, growls, squeaks or peeps including grasses, roots, berries, insects, fish, and animals - dead or alive. It’s no place for humans, but no problem for bears because they can outrun, out-climb, out-swim, out-dig and out-fight everything in the forest. Virtually untouched by development, those swamps are home to four species of poisonous snakes, ticks and spiders by the millions, mosquitoes (about as big as hummingbirds), panthers, wild boars and alligators. For that ecosystem, look no farther than eastern North Carolina where three of the darkest, deepest most formidable swamps in all the South lie along our coast: the Green Swamp, the Great Dismal Swamp and Angola. ![]() Ken Spell, hunting on the Black River, 26 miles from Wilmington, recently took a 720-pounder.īlack bears flourish in large expanses of uninhabited swamps, hardwoods and pocosins. Closer to home, Pender County grows some giants too. The state record is an 880-pound bruiser taken in Craven County. In fact, the largest black bears in the world live in coastal North Carolina. Adaptable and resilient, most live in what is arguably the best habitat in America - the coastal plain of North Carolina. Since then, the population has grown to more than 25,000 animals statewide. Then, in the 1970s, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission began a remarkably successful bear management program that included the establishment of sanctuaries encompassing over 500,000 secluded acres. They were found only in the most remote areas where there was little human footprint. In the mid-1960s, there were fewer than 1,000 black bears in North Carolina. They’re out there, and the numbers grow each year.” “Bears are primarily nocturnal, so it’s hard to convince people that there are so many bears living close to our neighborhoods - especially those communities that border dense forest areas. “I’ve seen numerous bears in New Hanover, Pender, and Brunswick counties,” said Kit Taylor who has hunted, photographed, and observed black bears for the past 50 years. We don’t want to see these animals become extinct, and so most of us are willing to help in some way - as long as they don’t visit our front yard. Most of us are aware that through development and urbanization, we are pushing bears and many other wild animals into increasingly smaller territory. ![]()
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