Despite our unprecedented warm weather this winter, most of Western North Carolina’s black bears are sleeping deep right now, and some females have just recently given birth. Bears are among the most charismatic species in the eastern U.S., and bear ecology is pretty fascinating. The WNC bear population is super healthy and we are learning much more about their movements, habitat needs, and tolerance for living around people.
I’ve given this presentation several times around WNC now, but I’ve been working to turn it into an article others can access.
More about bears ecology in western North Carolina and how the Grandfather CFLR project impacts bears.
Bears once ranged throughout North America. Following a steep decline brought about by overhunting and habitat loss, bears have recovered not to their historic range, but populations are slowly trending that way.
Pre-1800’s
Today
North Carolina is one of the states where bears are thriving. Check out how their population has expanded over the past 40 years.
In 1970, North Carolina’s statewide population stood at about 1500 bears. The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission then established 28 black bear sanctuaries at about 800,000 acres.
The result: today there are about 17,000 – 20,000 bears, 6500-8000 in WNC alone. You may not realize it, but state and federal wildlife agencies have about as good of a track record of success as any organization. Believe it or not, white-tailed deer, turkeys, and Canada geese were all on the brink of extinction before wildlife managers stepped in regulate harvest and protect habitat.
For bears, North Carolina’s establishment of sanctuaries helped protect a breeding nucleus of females (sows) and helps produce a dispersing surplus of bears that can be harvested without detriment to the population.
Check out North Carolina’s Black Bear Management Plan if you want to learn more about what the Wildlife Resource Commission is doing to conserve bear populations.
#bearlife
I don’t know if that is a real hashtag, but if it were it would be alot of posts about 2 things. Eating and Reproducing, which drives everything a bear does. They actually need about 6 components in order to thrive.
- Access to food
- Access to water
- Escape Cover
- Den sites
- Travel corridors
- Enough space to exist
What is home?
A male bear’s (boar) home range (an area over which an animal regularly travels in search of food or mates) is about 12,000 acres while a female’s is about 3,500 acres. For reference, the Biltmore Estate is about 6900 acres while Asheville is about 27,000 acres.
Although bears are generally pretty territorial, they become less so as food becomes more plentiful. Think Grizzlies and Salmon when the fish ar
e migrating upstream. Black bears will be similarly tolerant of one another when it comes to acorns, garbage, bird seed, or blueberries. When I worked in Florida, it wasn’t uncommon to see 4 or more bears in a single oak tree at certain times.
FACT: A bear’s sense of smell is about seven times better than a bloodhound, due to a large nasal mucous membrane that is 100 times larger than a human.
A bit about Hibernation?
The winter denning period on the Grandfather runs from about December – March based somewhat on weather, but mostly based on the lack of food. Bears utilize a variety of structures for dens in the U.S. In WNC. The preferred den consists of a suitable cavity inside a standing tree, whether it is live or dead (i.e. a snag), most of the time its White Oak.
Ever seen a tree with a big hole like this?
While in the den, bears
- Lower heart rates
- Constrict of blood vessels
- Suppress shivering
- Reduce breathing
- Lower oxygen consumption
- drop body temp 10-15°F
- Do not eat
- Do not defecate
- Do not urinate
Interestingly, they do not lose bone or muscle mass or strength during hibernation (5 months-ish). They can wake up and run. Humans start to lose bone and muscle after 3 weeks in bed. This is being studied by the medical profession to help people that are bed-stricken.
Cubs are born in the den and they are about the size of a soda can. 
Females with cubs are the last bears to emerge from their dens in spring. The female emerges from her den once the cubs are capable of leaving and following her.
When they wake up, it’s time to eat
In the spring, bears emerge from dens lower in body weight and hungry. Feeding is the most important activity and is reflected in the areas they use. Bears are Opportunistic Omnivores, which means they pretty much eat everything. They don’t seem to like citrus for whatever reason, but they are food generalists. In spring, bears begin to fulfill their 12-month nutrition needs over the next 8 months.
Although it varies seasonally, the WNC bear’s diet is about 80% plants, 15% insects, and 5% meat. Although in some urban or agriculture areas (Asheville or eastern NC respectively), their diet could consist of as much as 40 – 60% human-provided foods includ
ing garbage, corn, waste from hog farms, deer feed, and bird seed.
Spring food primarily consists of bear corn (aka Squawroot), new green growth of grasses and forbs, clovers, insects, and dead animals.
Summer
Transitioning to summer, which includes June-July breeding season, bear habitat use shifts as different food crops become available like soft mast, which is any fruit with a soft exterior.
In the Southern Blue Ridge, this includes blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, huckleberries, pokeberries, grapes, serviceberry, Virginia creeper berry, greenbriar berry, wild plum fruit, spice bush berry, sassafras berry, dogwood berry, mulberry, wild apple fruit, and carolina buckthorn berry.
Fall (Winter Denning Prep)
Nutritional quality of foods decline from summer to fall. In preparation for Winter, hard mast (fruit with hard exterior) becomes the primary food for bears. 
In the Southern Blue Ridge, this includes acorns, hickory nuts, walnuts and beech nuts, but these crops are highly variable among different places and years. Hard mast crops are largely dependent on frost date and rainfall during flowering and fruiting periods.
A bear’s ability to accumulate fat before winter denning is essential to survival and successful reproduction. Turns out they eat about 20,000 calories/day during the fall and acorns make up a big part of that. Just a small handful of acorns provides 110 calories and 7g fat. 
One thing that is really interesting is that bear’s bodies change to increase digestion of fats and carbs at the expense of protein digestion, which facilitates rapid weight gain.
During poor hard mast years, bears move significantly greater distances in search of acorns which leads to greater number of bear death in terms of roadkill, hunter harvest, etc. You can usually tell these years by the number of roadkill squirrels you see, cause there doing the same thing. Traveling more to find enough food. 
This also relates to bears getting into your garbage.
Interestingly, turns out urban bears are healthier (i.e., weigh about 30% more) and produce more cubs than “forest-exclusive” bears. Well-fed females can double their offspring, give birth at younger age, but they also tend to die younger.
The average for “forest-exclusive” sows is 2 cubs, 
whereas its not uncommon for bears in and around Asheville or hog farms, or other good supplemental food source to have 4-5 cubs. Higher numbers of cubs indicates healthier, well-fed females.
So why, you ask, do they like your garbage so much? Here’s how your garbage compares to acorns. You tell me.
| Food | Calories | # of Acorns |
| Hummingbird Nectar (16 oz) | 385 | 101 |
| Eggs (1 dozen) | 888 | 234 |
| Bananas (6 med) | 920 | 242 |
| Honey (1 cup) | 1031 | 272 |
| Bread (1 loaf) | 1280 | 337 |
| Fish, clams & oysters (1 lb) | 1314 | 346 |
| Hot dogs (1 lb) | 1456 | 384 |
| McDonald’s Cheeseburger | 1620 | 427 |
| Sunflower seeds (1 lb) | 1740 | 458 |
| KFC Fried Chicken combo | 1770 | 467 |
| Crackers (1 box) | 2037 | 536 |
| *Hickory Nuts (1 lb) | 2051 | 540 |
| *Huckleberries (1lb) | 2105 | 554 |
| Watermelon (10” whole) | 2464 | 649 |
| Bacon (1lb) | 2532 | 666 |
| Jelly donuts (1 doz) | 2640 | 695 |
| Chocolate chip cookies (1 lb) | 3200 | 843 |
| Dry feed corn (1 lb) | 4580 | 1206 |
| Peanut Butter (28 oz) | 4750 | 1250 |
| Vanilla Ice cream (1 gallon) | 4960 | 1305 |
| Birdseed (7 lbs) | 12180 | 3206 |
| Grease/Shortening (3 lb) | 12430 | 3271 |
| Pepperoni Pizza (1 large) | 17352 | 4566 |
| Purina dog chow (25 lb) | 42425 | 11165 |
Needless to say its alot easier to tear down a bird feeder or knock over a garbage can than it is to hunt for acorns.
The Asheville Urban/Suburban Bear Study published this map a few years ago and its really cool. They’ve been putting satellite collars on bears and it gives their locations a few times per day. Each dot on the map represents one of those locations. Different colors are different bears.
I look at how small the home ranges are for urban-dwelling bears.
It makes sense.
If Whole Foods set up a buffet in your backyard, why go to Ingles, Earthfare, Aldi and Neo Burrito?
Bears, Forest Conservation and Management and The Role of Fire
I wanted to mention forest conservation and management, fire and how all that relates to bears in urban areas like Asheville or Black Mountain.
Southern Blue Ridge bears have evolved in a mostly oak-hickory and mixed hardwood forest. We know now that a unique set of conditions have created and maintained bear and wildlife habitat that we see today.
Fire was once a big part of our native forests and grasslands. Native Americans used controlled burning for at least the past 10,000 years, until the 1800’s. They used it for ceremony, hunting, agriculture, promoting desirable food trees (oaks, chestnuts), promoting berry-producing plants, and warfare. The first explorers described vast open grasslands and areas where trees were few and the natives burned everything. European settlers recognized the value of fire and adopted the burning practice when they arrived.
Want more about Southern Appalachian Fire History?
1998 (Frost) Presettlement fire frequency regimes of the United States – A First Approximation
1791 (Bartram) Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida
2017 (Lafon et al) Fire History of the Appalachian Region
The widespread logging and industrialization that occurred in the early 1900’s leveled Southern Appalachian forests, while 
blight eliminated most American Chestnut, the premier wildlife food source of the south. Meanwhile wildfire and farming all combined to create a wide open landscape where sun-loving trees and plants (oaks, hickory, southern pines, berry and seed-producing plants would attain dominance and thrive.
An outcome of these widespread removal of trees was the accumulation of dry, cured wood while dry weather periods would occur periodically and create conditions for widespread wildfire.
The federal government would subsequently establish the m
ost effective fire suppression program in the world. These fire suppression efforts have been so effective that we have all but eliminated fire from many areas of the country. In fact, the Southern Blue Ridge Mountains have more trees than any time in history and both live and dead vegetation has been accumulating for the past 70 years.
The largely unforeseen result is that we are now losing major components of our natural areas. Today’s premier wildlife food trees, the oaks, are dying of old age and disease.
The southern pines that are backbone of southern forests for that past 10,000 years are dying from old age and disease, and pests, which is expected. However, they are not being replaced with new pines because so little sunlight can penetrate the dense forest canopy and understory of rhododendron, mountain laurel, white pine, and red maple. This is known as mesophication.
Here’s more about it. 2008 (Nowacki and Abrams) The demise of fire and mesophication of forests in the eastern United States
Wildflowers and berry producing plants have declined and most believe this has contributed to pollinator decline. Songbirds and gamebirds such as quail and grouse that depend on open, treeless areas continue to decline, while unnaturally dense tree stands are more stressed and subject to decimation by pests and disease. See Southern Pine Beetle
Fires now behave differently than they have throughout history, primarily as a result of weather, human actions and the accumulation of vegetation. Climate change combined with nearly 90 years of fire suppression has resulted in more frequent, more intense wildfires. The record-breaking Southern Appalachian fall fire season of 2016 exemplified this, resulting in more than 50 major wildfires that burned 100,000 acres through eight states, leading to 14 deaths and producing toxic smoke visible from space.
The Nature Conservancy strives to maintain fire’s role where it benefits people and nature, while keeping fire out of places where it is destructive. Forest fires are nature’s powerful change agents that shape ecosystems. Many Conservancy preserves contain plants and animals that require fairly frequent fire. Having conducted more than 1.5 million acres of burning on Conservancy and partner lands since 1988, the Conservancy is a recognized leader in the field of ecological fire management, including controlled burning.
So how does this affect bears?
Historically, forest communities and treeless areas within large forests contained important food plants including blueberry, huckleberry, raspberry & blackberry, and oak acorns as well as insects, which are all significant components of bear diets. All of these food sources require high sunlight in order to produce food and thrive.
Bears eat such a wide variety of foods they’ll survive just fine. The questions become if/how bear behavior will shift to more human-provided foods, and to what extent will the number of human-bear conflicts increase. For example, bears den in winter primarily because there is no food. What happens if they begin to adapt to more human-provided food? Females will continue to den, but do males start to den less and forage throughout the year near people?
A lot of good wildlife habitat restoration and management work is occurring throughout North Carolina. One example is The Grandfather CFLR project , which is addressing these issues via controlled burning and timber management on the nearly 200,000-acre Grandfather Ranger District of Pisgah National Forest. 
All habitat restoration and management projects that CFLR funding enables, including controlled burning, are aimed at reducing the density of unnaturally thick and stressed forests to provide more open and healthy forest with habitat for specialist species like ruffed grouse and chestnut-sided warbler. These habitat types are declining and so are the wildlife that depend on them.
A specialist species can thrive only in a narrow range of environmental conditions or has a limited diet (quail, grouse, golden-winged warbler, tiger salamander, green salamander)
A generalist species is able to thrive in a wide variety of environmental conditions and can make use of a variety of different resources.(bears, raccoons, cardinals, crows, deer)
The same projects will restore and/or perpetuate the shortleaf pine, a species that has thick bark, extensive below ground roots, rot resistance, and serotinous cones: traits that enable them to withstand fire or come back soon after a burn. Those traits also allow shortleaf to provide perching and nesting habitat for birds, like American Kestrel, 
who specialize in hunting in open forest and farmland.
White oaks and red oaks have similar traits and perpetuating these species will provide maximum food resources for bears, turkeys, and blue jays. Many of the plants that produce soft berries that bears depend on respond rapidly to forest opening by producing more flowers and berries.
The protections we have in place and the bear’s life strategy as a food and habitat generalist will allow them to persist into the future. However, I suspect the human-bear relationship may become much closer if their natural foods decline and human-provide foods increase.
Maybe not that close. 
Grandfather Restoration Project 