A season of bear break-ins
The camps in the Fox River and Council area may have been spared major damage from the storm that pummeled the coastal regions around Nome, but this year they’ve been plagued with another natural hazard: brown bear break-ins.
“There seems to be higher amounts of break-ins by bears compared to previous years,” said Sara Germain, area wildlife biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish & Game in Nome.
Germain suggested a couple possible reasons driving the uptick. Bears may have had poor access to food during the past spring and summer, or they are getting accustomed to finding food or other attractants in and around cabins in the region.
“Attractants” could be as simple as bird seed, a dirty grease trap on a grill, or apparently, as Michael Hannigan found out, paint and varnish.
“I never leave any food or anything like that at camp,” Hannigan said. “It didn’t click with me when I left the paint and varnish there—that is bear food. They love that stuff.”
Hannigan has been going to his camp at Bear Creek for some 20 years without many significant runins, besides the occasional grizzly watching him practice tai chi on the beach.
“Whenever I’m out there, I just feel so lucky,” he said. “It’s a slice of heaven. You go there and there’s the river and the tundra and it’s just great.”
But this year’s constant repairs were a headache. When Hannigan opened the camp this spring, he found that a bear had broken in through the door window of his shop that was full of equipment and tools. The bear got into the paint and varnish, as well as oil for a chainsaw and oil for a boat motor.
“Apparently he was looking for just the right nail or screw and had difficulty finding it because he dumped out every bin that had nails or screws in it and just made a shambles of the place,” Hannigan said.
He spent days cleaning, but that was just the first of at least four incidents throughout the season. Bears broke windows, they tore off the back of his deck, they pried open cans of sardines and ripped up bear boards meant to prevent break-ins. His neighbors similarly faced multiple incidents, and according to Germain, the pattern could be difficult to break as bears are creatures of habit.
“Even if your cabin is free of attractants, once a bear successfully finds food in one cabin, it will likely continue to get into any cabin it can in its search for food,” Germain said. “Bears seek out the same wild foods in the same places year after year. Bears conditioned to eating human food will similarly return to cabins, fish camps, or other areas until food is no longer available, or they are killed.”
People with camps in the Council area are used to dealing with damage from their animal neighbors, like rabbits that chew away at insulation, wire and plywood, but bears have the potential for more dangerous conflicts with humans. For now, the break-ins seem to have only hurt pocketbooks.
ADF&G’s best recommendations are still for cabin owners to remove all food and attractants and to reinforce their doors and install bear shutters over windows when they are not actively at camp. Anyone with questions or concerns about securing a camp can 907-443-2271.