Sabian Warren

swarren@citizen-times.com

ASHEVILLE – No area of the city is free from the presence of roaming black bears, but people are surprisingly tolerant when it comes to living close to the imposing animals.

Those are among the early findings of a five-year study of Asheville's growing population of urban and suburban bears.

The study, a collaboration between N.C. State University and the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, kicked off in April, with a focus on attaching collars equipped with GPS devices on bears to enable biologists to learn more about their habits.

Five months in, researchers have attached collars to 37 bears, nearly reaching the goal of 40, said N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission biologist Mike Carraway, a study participant.

"It's not easy to catch bears, but we've had great success," he said.

State researchers hope the study, the first of its kind in the Southeast, will shed new light on how bears survive and even thrive in populated areas.

Knowledge gained will help researchers map out strategies for how bears and humans can better coexist.

Some discoveries so far:

1 - Bears are everywhere

Despite their size — males can reach up to 600 pounds in the mountains and up to 800 pounds in eastern North Carolina — bears are elusive and difficult to study because of their intelligence and wariness. But the GPS collars allow researchers to get updates on a bear's location every 15 minutes.

Bear routes crisscross the city in every direction.

"If we gave you a map showing the bears' movements, it would be a solid map of Asheville," Carraway said. "The east and northeast and south have more bears, but there are pretty much bears everywhere."

A collared bear Gov. Pat McCrory encountered during a visit to the Governor's Western Residence on Town Mountain Road over Labor Day offers a good example of how researchers can keep track of bears.

A map of the animal's movements showed the female bear was spending most of her time in an oval-shaped area about 2 miles long and east of the Grove Park Inn. The area included parts of Sunset Mountain, Chunns Cove, where she was collared May 8, and Beaverdam.

The bear did make an excursion another mile or so to the northeast to the area around Craven Gap, where Town Mountain Road ends at the Blue Ridge Parkway. That's about 3 miles northeast of the governor's residence.

Researchers have had requests from residents for an online interactive tool showing the movements of the collared bears, or a map of bear routes. But Carraway said such tools could not be provided to the public because of the potential for people to disturb the animals by going in search of them.

2 - Most city residents are OK with bears around

One of the most surprising findings for researchers has been the level of acceptance of bears by people in Asheville, evident from interactions with residents as researchers trap and study the animals, Carraway said.

The Wildlife Resources Commission typically fields 300-500 nuisance bear calls a year from people across Western North Carolina who have had their garbage cans or bird feeders raided, but Asheville residents mainly seem open to having bears around.

"People in general are a lot more tolerant of bears in their neighborhood than we suspected," Carraway said. "We typically are dealing with people who are mad about a bear in their neighborhood, so it's a pleasant surprise that a lot of people are pretty much OK with it."

That description would fit Wendy Bell and her husband, Joe, who live on Sunset Drive in North Asheville. The couple has spotted bears on or near their property for years, including a collared female bear with two cubs this summer.

Wendy Bell said bears are just part of life in her neighborhood, and her neighbors feel the same way.

"We're all pretty tolerant and are willing to give them space," she said. "They're minding their own business. There's nothing really aggressive or threatening that we have seen."

She said the animals are awe-inspiring every time she sees them.

"In the blink of an eye, they melt into the foliage," Bell said. "You don't even hear them. For something that big, it's amazing."

She said her family and neighbors have taken a few simple precautions to keep bears out of garbage cans and bird feeders, so there are few problems.

Joe Bell has attached their garbage cans to a tree with a chain, and the lids are secured with bolts.

"They leave ours alone," Wendy Bell said. "They've learned."

Bears generally avoid encounters with people, but threatening or violent incidents do occur occasionally. In 2011, a Candler man and his dog were injured in a scuffle with a bear, which started when the bear attacked the dog.

In 2010, a bear was euthanized after biting a tourist in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The last fatal attack in the region was in 2006, when a bear killed a 6-year-old girl in Cherokee National Forest in East Tennessee.

3 - Individual bears differ widely in their movements

Some bears, such as the one the governor encountered, choose an area and stay in it, while other animals are far more wide-ranging, traveling 20-30 miles in search of food or territory, Carraway said.

And the population is ever-changing, as some bears come into the city and others leave.

"We have bears moving in and bears moving out," Carraway said. "Some are staying in a small area, and some are moving around. It's something we suspected, but you don't really know until you have the data."

Some young bears born in the city wind up leaving.

"One of the things we've seen is yearlings, when they disperse from their mothers in the summer, some of them are dispersing two or three counties over," Carraway said.

4 - Bears aren't always territorial

Biologists have always thought male bears in particular don't like competition in their territory, but that's not always true.

"Traditionally we think of bears as territorial, particularly adult males," Carraway said. "But when food sources are abundant, males are more tolerant of each other. If there's a lot of food sources, we may find two or three big bears in an area. Even more surprising is seeing big adult males hanging around with yearling males."

5 - Urban bears are healthy, produce more cubs

Town bears generally are healthier and better fed than their country cousins because they are supplementing natural foods with food from human sources.

"The bears in town seem to be a whole lot healthier than the bears in the forest," Carraway said. "It's because they're getting a lot better food in the way of bird feeders, trash, and being fed by people."

Healthy, well-fed female bears can double their number of offspring, a pattern biologists have understood for years. But with the study, researchers will be able to document the correlation with hard data.

"For some years we've been seeing female bears with three, four or five cubs," Carraway said. "That's an indication of how healthy they are."

A female bear in a wilderness area typically would produce two cubs, he said.

The collars will allow biologists to get a much better idea of where bears choose to den in the coming winters and how many young the females produce.

"This winter, we'll look at where bears are denning and evaluate their cubs," Carraway said.

By learning about reproduction rates, biologists will get a better idea of the number of bears in the city.

Researchers kicked off the study in the spring by catching bears using baited culvert traps — large metal containers with a doors that slam shut when a bear goes inside. Captured bears were tranquilized to allow researchers to attach the collars, then released unharmed a short time later.

The GPS collars are programmed to automatically unclasp and fall off bears after three years, or collars can be unclasped by biologists remotely at any time.

Funding for the $600,000 study is coming from a decades-old federal tax on firearms and ammunition, a tax that sends money to wildlife research, game projects and hunter education in North Carolina and elsewhere.

Bear population growth

Estimates for the statewide population of bears, which includes about 7,000 animals in the mountains and a larger population in eastern North Carolina.

1970: 1,500-3,000

2001: 4,000

2010: 14,000-16,000

2014: 17,000-20,000

Source: N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission