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Garbage is richer in calories than nuts or berries.... you could feed the world from my garbage dump
Garbage is richer in calories than nuts or berries.... you could feed the world from my garbage dump -- Posted by tigerlilly@privacy.net.org.com on 06-07-05 17:09
With Carryout, Bears Find a Life-Changing Experience
By CORNELIA DEAN
New York Times
Published: June 7, 2005
Until recently, the black bears in the Nevada mountains had a hard
life. Housing developments, ski resorts and golf courses were moving
into their habitat. In dry years, finding protein-rich pinyon nuts, a
staple of their prehibernation diet, could be a challenge. Often, the
berry patches produced thin fruit crops.
Skip to next paragraph
Philip King/Associated Press
Black bears have found hunting for food much easier lately. In this era
of sprawl, they have discovered the trash bin.
Forum: Wildlife
About 10 years ago, though, the bears discovered a source of food that
is widely available, regularly replenished and nutritious. They
discovered garbage. And they have moved en masse into urban areas to
enjoy it.
"Garbage is the ultimate resource for bears," said Dr. Jon P. Beckmann,
who studied the black bears of western Nevada for his doctoral
dissertation and now works in the mountain West as a field ecologist
for the Wildlife Conservation Society, the organization that manages
the Bronx Zoo.
Garbage is richer in calories than nuts or berries, he said, and it is
much easier to find, turning up regularly in the trash bins and garbage
cans of every subdivision. And unlike a berry patch that produces fruit
only once a year, the trash bins are like a chain of luncheonettes for
bears that never run out of food. Bears that live on garbage are
heavier and taller than their country cousins, Dr. Beckmann said. They
even have more cubs.
In the early 1990's, 90 percent of the region's bears were living in
the wild and 10 percent were urban, Dr. Beckmann said. But drought in
the late 1980's and early 1990's sent bears to towns in search of food,
and today 90 percent of the region's bears are urban, with some living
full time inside city limits or even in single neighborhoods.
"Once they discover garbage, they don't look back," he said.
Dr. Beckmann said the shift was unusually pronounced in the Nevada
mountains he studied because the contrast was so great between the
sparse forage of the hills and the abundance of the bins. But similar
problems are cropping up all over the mountain West and other locales
where bears and people come into contact.
Dr. Beckmann, who described his research in a talk last month at the
zoo, came East to describe bear-control efforts to wildlife managers
and other officials in the Adirondacks, which has its own nuisance
bears.
"There has been a huge increase in bear incidents in the high peaks,"
said Bill Weber, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's North
America Program, referring to the 46 mountains south of Lake Placid and
Saranac Lake that are more than 4,000 feet high. In part, he said, the
increase is attributable to more building in areas open to development
there.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has
proposed changing rules in wilderness areas of the Adirondack Park to
require visitors to keep food, garbage and toiletries in containers
"manufactured for the specific purpose of resisting entry by bears." To
be bearproof, Dr. Beckmann said, a container must be made of thick,
nonpliable metal, and have latches in recessed compartments bear paws
cannot reach.
In New Jersey and Connecticut, where the black bears were almost wiped
out by 1900, populations are also on the rise. So far, urbanized bears
are not a big problem in those states, but wildlife agencies
nevertheless advise rural residents to invest in bearproof garbage
containers; to store garbage in garages, sheds or basements; to make
sure the grill is cleaned after every barbecue; and to otherwise avoid
tempting bears with food.
Requiring bearproof containers is one of the few effective measures for
getting rid of nuisance bears, Dr. Beckmann said, noting that when he
and others captured Nevada bears and moved them far out of town, even
hundreds of miles away, 92 percent returned, 70 percent in less than 40
days.
At Yellowstone, where he is working now, nuisance bears dispersed into
the woods after the widespread adoption of bearproof trash bins. But
naturalists are beginning to wonder whether urban living has changed
bear habits so much they will have a hard time readjusting to the wild.
Dr. Beckmann, who used radio collars and other means to identify and
track bears, said bears in the wild were typically active 13 hours a
day, in daytime, hunting for food. The urban bears were on the move
only about 8=BD hours and at night, "cruising through the garbage under
cover of darkness."
Abundant food and relative lack of exercise may explain why urban bears
are so much larger than their rural cousins. In the wild, males rarely
weigh more than 250 pounds, but garbage-fed males routinely reach 400
pounds or more.
And while the rural bears retire to their dens for winter on Dec. 4, on
average, the urban bears put it off until New Year's. "We had several
male bears giving up on hibernation entirely," Dr. Beckmann said.
Although there are occasional reports of black bears attacking or even
killing people, these incidents are rare, Dr. Beckmann said. Even
attacks on livestock are unusual. But when bears are kept out of
garbage cans or trash bins, they sometimes turn to cars and houses.
Abundant food and relative lack of exercise may explain why urban bears
are so much larger
Black bear claws are shorter and more curved than the claws of the
larger brown bears, Dr. Beckmann said, which makes them ideal for
ripping open a car door, tearing a kitchen window out of its frame or
clawing through siding.
He can cite many examples of bears breaking into kitchens and
overturning refrigerators, napping in people's hallways after
ransacking their pantries or otherwise terrorizing householders.
That is just one reason naturalists hope that bears will eventually
give up the bright lights and return to their wild roots. In spite of
the urban abundance of food, and the fact that urban females have on
average 2=BC cubs per litter, compared with 1=BD for rural bears, the
overall bear population is not increasing, Dr. Beckmann said, probably
because so many urban bears are killed by cars and trucks. Also, bears
living in towns do not perform the ecological tasks - like seed
dispersal or insect-eating - they would normally perform in the wild.
But given the sprawling growth in places like Nevada, bears do not have
to move to town to find themselves urbanized. "We had a bear that had
400 homes go up right in the middle of its home range," Dr. Beckmann
said. "Now it spends its entire time within those 400 homes."
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