It’s time for Connecticut’s black bears to wake up but, in fact, they never really stayed asleep.
“Our winter was so mild that we were getting periodic reports of mostly male bears getting up, moving around,” said Jenny Dickson, acting bureau chief of natural resources for the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
This activity comes as the agency continues to encourage residents to avoid bear encounters, take steps to make property unattractive to bears by eliminating easy food sources, and to understand the new law on bears that took effect in October.
Meanwhile, “People were seeing bear tracks; people were seeing bears almost all winter long and that’s pretty unusual,” Dickson said.
“The males will get up and move occasionally. They’re not as tied to the whole process of denning as the females are because they’re giving birth and raising young.”
Dicksons said this isn’t the first year male bears were lumbering about during the winter because of higher temperatures.
“Usually we’ll have longer periods of time, particularly up in the northwest corner, where they’re just hunkered down there. They’re not getting up. Nobody’s seeing them. We’re not getting any reports,” she said.
“We definitely had reports most of the winter. We’d get the occasional sighting so that’s a little bit different,” Dickson said. “And we’ve noticed that as an increasing trend over the last several years because our winters have been a lot milder in general.”
Bear moms and life cycle
There are between 1,000 and 1,200 bears in Connecticut and they have been sighted in every town and city, according to “The State of the Bears,” a DEEP publication, downloadable online. In the last three years, females with offspring have been seen in 117 towns, 80 in just 2023.
“What works for Sharon works just as well for Stonington. It really doesn’t matter,” Dickson said. “We all need to be paying attention to these kinds of things to help keep bears and to keep people safe.”
Bears mate in the fall and have a seven-month gestation period. Around late March and April is when mothers and cubs begin to emerge, Dickson said.
“They give birth, they start raising the cubs,” she said. “Initially the cubs are really too small to move around. So by hibernating that allows them time to raise the cubs in a very confined space where everybody’s safe. The cubs can get bigger and by the time they come out of hibernation, the cubs can follow around with the female.”
The females only give birth every other year, though, Dickson said.
“That’s part of why we get reports a lot and … people talk about seeing a female with what we call yearlings, older cubs that are still hanging around,” she said.
Keeping bears and humans safe
Humans have had negative interactions with bears in Connecticut over the last several years, including a 74-year-old woman who was walking her dog on a leash in Avon in April 2023 was bitten by a black bear, according to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
The agency said at the time that, as public safety is its “top priority”, under the Black Bear Response protocol, “an attack on a human is a category 4 response, meaning humane euthanization of the bear.”
Then, in May, a bear charged an Avon bakery worker in a frightening incident and binged on 60 cupcakes.
Connecticut passed a law that went into effect in October, and according to DEEP allows people to request permits to take bears when bears “are damaging agricultural crops, livestock, or apiaries, and non-lethal responses are unreasonable or ineffective; bans the intentional feeding of potentially dangerous animals (including bears); and establishes the right to use deadly force to defend oneself, other people, and one’s pets if attacked, in certain circumstances.”
The law does not allow bear hunting and it places strict requirement on killing a bear in self-defense or defense of another person or person. It bans intentional feeding of potentially dangerous wildlife; composting is not considered feeding wildlife.
DEEP reminds residents that killing a bear in self-defense or in defense of others should “only occur in situations of imminent danger. Further, according to the agency, any such killing must be reported to DEEP, law enforcement will investigate, and if it is “deemed not justified under the law, it may be a prosecutable offense.”
The agency says situations of “imminent danger” occur if a person “reasonably believes” that a bear is:
- Inflicting or is about to inflict great bodily harm to a human;
- Injuring or killing one’s pet that is otherwise controlled in accordance with any applicable provision of the general statutes or other such regulation; or
- Is entering a building occupied by people.
Don’t set a dinner table for bears
Once female bears emerge this year, they join the males in looking for food, whether it be insects, small animals or the garbage and other food humans leave out for them
“It could be anything from chickens on up,” Dickson said. “It’s really opportunistic for them. And I would say, most of our nuisance complaints last year involve chickens.
“And if there’s one thing we can strongly stress to people who do have backyard chickens is make sure you put electric fencing around them because it is incredibly attractive for bears. They will get into chicken coops and electric fencing really does make a huge difference,” she said.
That’s true for those who keep bees as well, Dickson said. Electric fences will keep beekeepers from finding their hives turned over.
“Pets are always an interesting challenge just because I think a lot of times the unplanned interactions we have with bears sometimes involve pets,” Dickson said.
“Anything else that they can find to help build up all the fat reserves they lost during the winter? It’s all fair game,” she said. “So, thinking about how we manage things around our homes and our yards: Don’t put your trash out until it’s collection day. Make sure if you’re grilling outdoors, you clean that. Don’t feed your pets outdoors.”
This is also the time to bring in bird feeders, Dickson said. “I know folks in areas where the bears have been a little bit more active have already been doing that,” she said.
“So that is a really important part of it as well,” she said. “A lot of it comes down to paying attention to the weather. If you’re seeing changes in in the weather, it’s getting warmer or if you’ve had reports of a bear being active in your town, it’s probably a good time to take the feeders down before you run into problems.”
Ed Stannard can be reached at estannard@courant.com.
