Plenty of bear sightings, but not necessarily more bears in our southern Vermont towns

By Lorien Strange
©2024 Telegraph Publishing LLC

Everyone seems to have a bear story these days. If you haven’t seen one — or four  — this season, just check your social media feed to find that these lumbering animals are local internet sensations.

So how big is the Vermont bear population now and are we experiencing a baby cub boom?

The latest figures from the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department estimated the black bear population at 6,000 to 7,500 bears in 2023. Even so, it’s down from the five-year high reached in 2022 with 6,900 to 8,000 individuals. Fish & Wildlife estimates the population numbers from bears taken during hunting season and killed in vehicle collisions or other conflicts.

Though these population trends aren’t necessarily what’s driving the flood of bear-related photos, videos and comments on social media — interactions between humans and black bears are rising in 18 states including Vermont and neighboring New Hampshire, and even people who are accustomed to dealing with bears aren’t used to them being this bold.

Sandra Russo of Cavendish had seen bears occasionally around her home, but it wasn’t until recently that they started crossing the busy road out front. Her video doorbell has caught bears on camera twice, once late at night putting its paws up on her dog gate and once walking up onto her porch and sniffing around before stalking off.

“It’s scary,” she said of the bears’ newfound audacity. Russo used to feel mostly comfortable taking her old dog out late at night, but since the dog died and the bears visited her porch, she’s been nervous about walking outside alone after dark.

Forty-six percent of bear incidents reported to Fish & Wildlife stem from trash and compost that haven’t been properly secured. But Russo has a garbage disposal and takes her trash to the Transfer Station. Per Fish & Wildlife’s recommendations, she doesn’t put out her bird feeders between March and December. So why were the bears suddenly so interested in her house?

Game Warden David Lockerby says that it most likely comes down to neighbors. “The bears have been to someone else’s house and were able to get food there. Bears are smart,” he said. Once they learn to associate human-inhabited areas with food, they don’t discriminate between whose trash cans or berry bushes they raid.

In Andover, John Specker recounts a mother and three cubs who climbed through his orchard while he and his family watched from indoors.

“Sometimes she looks more like a human in a bear suit,” he says of the mother bear. “She was teaching her children how to get into the compost bin—pointing with her claws and talking to them and explaining how to knock it over.” Specker and his grandson had “quite a show” watching the mother bear jump up into the trees.

While cute, these kinds of bear stories are concerning to Jaclyn Comeau, Fish & Wildlife’s black bear project leader. Responding to a VTDigger commentary that described a similar encounter two years ago, she wrote, “As a wildlife biologist, my heart sinks when I read this scenario.  A mother bear who is comfortable nurturing her cubs with onlooking people nearby has learned to see backyards as a reliable and safe place to find food. Spending time in human-dominated landscapes puts bears at risk, whether through ingesting harmful garbage, making dangerous road crossings, or creating conflicts with people over defense of property. These behaviors can also erode public tolerance for living alongside bears—as found by research conducted in the Adirondacks.”

Specker also worries about what might happen if the bears’ game of bluff-charging the dogs suddenly becomes real, or what he’ll do if a bear finds its way into his house in the middle of the night. “Maybe I ought to make one of those rope ladders out of my sheets and throw it out the window to escape,” he jokes.

But Specker believes there’s not much he can do to stop them from swinging by. He says the main attraction in his yard is his beloved orchard, which he planted in 1980. When asked if he had called Fish & Wildlife about the situation, he said, “No. They’ll just tell me to cut down my trees.”

Living with Vermont’s bears

To protect livestock and produce, Fish & Wildlife’s Living with Black Bears resource page recommends installing electric fences with an energizer with at least 0.7 joules of power to deter bears. But if you’ve already secured potential food sources as best as you can or if a barrier prevents you from doing so, that doesn’t mean that Fish & Wildlife can’t help you find additional resources to control a black bear problem.

 
Tackling more persistent or serious bear issues without contacting Fish & Wildlife beforehand can be dangerous for humans and bears alike.  Also, unless you are protecting yourself, another person  or pets and livestock from a bear that is actively threatening lives, killing a bear out-of-season or without a tag is illegal and carries an up to $2,000 fine.

As for the bears, Comeau, the wildlife biologist, told The Telegraph that when people wait to report problems until bears become a threat, it’s more difficult for Fish & Wildlife to help find a solution that doesn’t require euthanizing the bear.

“When we follow up on conflict reports, we’re trying to find solutions that promote coexistence between humans and bears,” she says. Bears have wide home ranges—10 to 25 square miles for female bears and 50 or more square miles for male bears. This makes relocating problem bears generally ineffective since they often return to their previous territories and resume the same disruptive behaviors.

Situations where state agents have to euthanize bears are “relatively rare,” but when bears start breaking into homes and cause “persistent, excessive property damage,” there may be no other option. Comeau stresses that humans have a responsibility to secure food sources that might attract bears and take any reasonable nonlethal measures against bears before they have a bear incident. But it’s best to contact Fish & Wildlife if a situation seems like it might get out of hand.

Brooke Cote and her husband have a small farm in Londonderry, where they have beehives, chickens, compost, berries and fruit trees — essentially everything that bears love. Based on each bear’s markings and footage from her trail cameras, Cote says she has seven black bears roaming around her property.

“It’s hard to find that fine line between having a small farm, raising chickens and bees, and respecting the wildlife,” she says. With bears coming more often to eat her chicken food — and last month, one bluff-charging her when she yelled at the bear to scare it off — finding that balance has been even more difficult.

So she’s been speaking to Londonderry’s State Game Warden Kyle Isherwood about taking some further control measures. “He’s been super helpful and informative,” Cote says. They’ve discussed using bear hounds to push the bears farther into the woods and discourage them from returning. Cote says she’s heard great success stories about people using this method in New Hampshire and Maine.

But the method also has technical challenges. There’s a risk that the dogs could chase the bears into nearby Route 11, which could be harmful for both the bears and the dogs. And with further construction and unsecured dumpsters at a nearby shopping area, the bears might not choose to stay in the woods after all.

Cote says that she and her family are “still in talks” with Isherwood, people who own bear hounds, and her neighbors about whether it would be worth trying the dogs. “We haven’t decided if that’s the route we need to go.”