Early wake up
I RECEIVED a phone call from a broadcaster asking me to chat about ‘bears coming out of hibernation early’ and how it would affect them.
I was a little surprised, as communications manager for the Lancashire Wildlife Trust, to receive this interesting question.
There were a couple of reasons, the first being how did they discover that I had expertise in bears? Which I didn’t.
And did they think we have bears in the woods and plains of North West of England?
The answer to the first question was that I did appear on Newsround a couple of years ago chatting about leopards in a school in India, but this was all about humanity encroaching on wildlife territory and the leopards wandering back in.
We have examples of that with foxes spotted in Media City in Salford and peregrines in Manchester City Centre.
And I have to admit that this was how I thought the interview would go.
I mentioned that in the UK hedgehogs are prone to coming out of hibernation early and this could be dangerous if there is a cold snap and they are ill-prepared to go back into a short hibernation.
The big problem is food. If something wakes up early from a sleep that is meant to see them through the winter, they will be really, really hungry.
When they start searching for food, it will not be available because it’s too early in the year.
Plants will not have grown and young prey will not be out and about.
So we will see hedgehogs roaming into our gardens looking for natural food and a little help from kindly householders, happy to put out some basic dog food to tide them over.
In other parts of the world, bears will come out of the safety of the woods to seek food if there is a shortage of plants, fish or small animals and there have been thousands of reports of cars and homes being broken into by these magnificent beasts.
I was asked ‘what do you do if you are approached by a bear?’
My answer was that we are unlikely to meet a bear in Asda car park but, if you, do drop your shopping and while the bear is digging into your bags, leg it to somewhere safe and call the authorities.
Since the interview I was told that the best thing to do is lie down and play dead because bears are fast runners, but after a couple of hours trying to get out of Ikea, they should be pretty disorientated, so you should get away fairly easy.
They will only be interested in your shopping bags.
Another question I was asked was ‘is there a good place for humans to engage with bears?’
I said at the zoo or in a proper wildlife park (USA, Russia) from a safe distance, otherwise just leave these wonderful beasts to roam in tranquillity.
And for those of you who are not sure, brown bears are large hairy mammals, growing to about six or seven feet tall and being quite ferocious.
On the other hand, hedgehogs are about 10 inches long, spiky and really, really shy.
Hedgehogs are unlikely to steal your shopping.