We do not need to start shooting bears.
Let’s think for a minute.
2026 is an even-numbered year, which means the pink salmon run is depressed. It also appears to be a bad year for several of the berries that make up a bear’s diet, which is as much as half vegetation. Combined, this means our brown bears have been hungry and their hunger brings them into town for food.
So few bears were in town at this time last year that I joked that I should take credit for that, as I had led a program last summer that brought about 125 bear-resistant trash cans to town.
It wasn’t the cans. It was the pink salmon run. The math works here. We should expect to see hungry bears around every other year and we should plan for that.
In even-numbered years if we don’t want to bump into bears in town, we need to have electric fences around all attractants – fruit trees, gardens, compost piles, accessible garbage, everything.
Bears won’t go where there’s no food. I know this from direct experience. For 30 years I’ve had a remote cabin where there’s no fish and few berries and I rarely, if ever, even see signs of bear, much less one in the flesh.
Secondly, our two recent maulings appear to fit into patterns we know about brown bears: Unlike the black bear or the polar bears, brown bears don’t eat us as food but they will attack perceived threats to their cubs and to their food sources.
Further and most importantly, when bears are rewarded by finding food in our neighborhoods, they will stick around.
At this time of year, brown bears are experiencing hyperphagia, a biological imperative to eat in order to survive hibernation, which is, effectively, six months of gradual starvation.
As winter draws near, bears become more and desperate for food. They will take bigger chances. It’s food or death for them, not a difficult choice for any living being.
Another take-away from the two recent run-ins: These attacks came with lightning speed, faster than their victims could respond in any practical way. It’s easy to forget a bear’s speed, as they tend to move around in a slow, lumbering way.
Their presence and speed puts a burden on us, at least in the fall-time of even-numbered years to be hyper-vigilant, to assume bears are around us instead of assuming they’re not.
Living with bears means understanding them, taking action to keep them at a safe distance and using extreme caution when they’re around. That’s a little bit of work but not too much to ask for the privilege of sharing this place with such a majestic beast.