CT bear break-ins, conflicts with humans detailed in DEEP report

From a black bear hibernating under a family’s deck to a bear crashing a child’s birthday party, 2022 proved to be the year of the bear in Connecticut.

In its 2022 “State of the Bears” report, which was released this week, Connecticut’s Department of Energy & Environmental Protection detailed a number of incidents pertaining to bears throughout the state, including human-bear conflicts, home break-ins and feeding ordinances.

One of the main highlights of the report is an increase in the number of human/bear interactions in the state. The increase in these interactions follows a growing trend that has only continued to climb over the past seven years. In 2022, there were 67 bear break-ins in 22 different towns — nearly double the amount of bear entries that occurred in 2021.

Human/bear interactions are defined as any interaction between a bear and a human or a human’s possessions, such as trash, birdfeeders, livestock, agriculture, pets, vehicles and homes.

In order to minimize bear interactions, DEEP recommends leaving bears alone if you see them in your neighborhood. However, if they’re in your home or on your property, the best option is to scare them away. Additionally, removing birdfeeders and managing garbage during warmer months helps prevent “troubling bear behavior before it starts.”

Last year also saw two bear attack incidents involving humans. Trash is the thing bears interacted with the most, according to 9,316 conflicts reported to DEEP since 2020. Birdfeeders are the second-most common thing bears interact with. Some towns have even passed birdfeeding ordinances; for example, Farmington limits the time of year that birdfeeders can be outside to December through the end of March.

Out of the states in Northeast, Connecticut saw the fifth-highest average number of annual human/bear conflicts with 870 a year, trailing behind Pennsylvania (3,187), Virginia (1,895), New Jersey (1,247) and New York (1,000). As for the average number of annual vehicular kills of bears, Connecticut ranks No. 7 in the area.

Though bears have been spotted in every single Connecticut town throughout history, only 158 of the state’s 169 municipalities had bear sightings last year. Most beer sightings were centralized to the northern and central regions of the state with the fewest sightings taking place in the eastern portion of the state. In total, DEEP estimates there are upwards of 1,200 bears in Connecticut.

Over the past seven years, the amount of reported sightings of sow, or female bears, with offspring have nearly doubled. DEEP notes that Connecticut has a high reproduction rate for black bears, with a threeyear average of 2.6 offspring per sow. Despite an increase in sows and offspring, DEEP believes the increase in bear sightings is actually attributed to the male bear population as males are more likely to leave their “birth range” than sows.

“The longer, wandering dispersal of young male bears helps to explain why sightings of bears are reported across Connecticut, but relatively few reports of sows with offspring come from outside the Northwestern quarter of the state,” DEEP said in its report.