Black bears in CT are out of their dens and looking for food
From under rock ledges and out of dense thickets, Connecticut's black bears are starting to emerge, bleary-eyed and bushy-tailed from their winter dens.
The problem: Some of the state's ursine neighbors have woken up with a hankering for garbage, and the contents of your bird feeder.
Connecticut's bear population typically start to emerge from their dens in midMarch, according to the state's Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Though the animals bed down for the winter in dens, they don't truly hibernate.
Here's what to know as black bears begin showing up in people's backyards again this spring.
Warm winter meant male bears were more active
The mild weather this winter meant there were reports of male bears moving around “almost all winter,” said Jenny Dickson, DEEP's acting bureau chief of natural resources.
“It's time to start thinking about bears being in the backyard,” Dickson said during a phone interview.
She said bears emerging from their dens now are looking for food, and will be for the next two months or so, since they have been living on fat reserves during the winter.
“Since they've been sleeping for a while, they're really hungry right now,” Dickson said.
For the bears’ own sake, remove anything that might attract them
Photos and videos of bears that show up on social media in Connecticut often have them going after bird feeders. But bears are also attracted to other human sources of food, like garbage, pet food stored outside, and grills.
That can spell bad news for the bears, because bears that become too accustomed to humans can end up being put down.
The DEEP recommends only leaving bird feeders out between December and late March, when bears are in their dens for the winter. Some can stay active through the winter months, however, if they're able to find food.
“If you live in an area with bears, it is best to avoid bird feeders altogether,” the agency says on its FAQ on bears.
“Bears that find bird feeders will often repeatedly visit the site in search of food day after day and year after year. Bird feeders and other bird food will attract bears closer to homes and humans,” the website said. “When bears begin to use human-associated food sources, they will frequent residential areas, lose their fear of humans, and not flee when harassed.”
Some towns have limits on when residents are allowed to put out bird feeders.
In extreme cases, bears have broken into people's homes. There were a jump in such incidents in 2022 — 67 break-ins across 22 towns, DEEP said in its “State of the Bears” report.
Bears are mostly driven by food right now
For most bears, the focus will be on finding
food over the next couple months, said Dixon.
In the woods, bears will forage skunk cabbage, which are started to sprout in wetlands — despite how it smells to us, “it's pretty delectable if you're a bear,” Dickson said. They may also feed on any leftover acorns they find on the ground, and insects under rotting logs.
As far as people's backyards, bears will be attracted to grills, but the two main attractants are trash and bird feeders, Dickson said.
Bringing your bird feeder inside this time of year won't deprive the birds.
“A lot of the birds that are still active right now are the ones who are with us all winter, so they know how to make use of the natural foods that are on the landscape,” Dickson said.
Many other migrant bird populations don't start making their way through the region until April and the beginning of May, when things start to grow out.
“The food and the insect availability kind of cycles with the birds as they're migrating up,” Dickson added.
In addition to food, mama bears will start to move around with cubs
this time of year and stay busy teaching them “how to be grown up bears,” Dickson said.
Also, “they're going to be sorting out their territories again,” Dickson said.
If you see a bear in your yard, scare it off
The DEEP says people who see a black bear in their yard should enjoy it from a distance. They also have a link where you can report the sighting online.
But it may also be a good idea to scare the bear off and make sure nothing in your yard is attracting it there.
The agency says loud noises, like banging pots and pans together or a whistle, should be enough to scare the animal off.
“Once the bear has left the area, take a close look at your yard for potential bear food sources, such as bird feeders, pet food, dirty barbecue grills, open compost, or trash,” the DEEP says.
Scaring the bear off may be better for it in the long run.
“It's really hard to resist the urge to you know, snap that photo of the bear or get that little video clip of a bear in the backyard,” Dickson said. “But even that, you know, 10 or 15 second encounter is a great opportunity for us to make some noise to try and scare the bear away to make that interaction with us a little less pleasant for the bear. A little scarier.”
Doing so is going to help the animal stay safe longer, she said, because otherwise bears may become comfortable being around people. That can learn to bears associating people's homes and backyards with food.
Despite proposals, CT has no bear hunting season
Proponents in favor of allowing people to hunt bears in Connecticut have gotten louder, particularly as reports of human and bear conflicts have increased.
Last year, lawmakers abandoned a push to let the DEEP set up a lottery system which would have allowed hunters to kill up to 50 black bears each year in Litchfield County.
The proposal died after advocates wrote letters to members of the Environment Committee in protest of the proposed bear hunt.
While hunting bears remains outlawed, the regulations do now allow farmers to apply to DEEP to kill nuisance bears.
The DEEP refers to the process as depredation permits.
If a farmer can show agricultural damage, like a bear eating a lot of their corn crop or killing their livestock, and the farmer can show they've taken reasonable measures to prevent the damage, then they can apply for the permit to take a certain number of bears, Dickson said.
The permit does not allow farmers to keep the bear as a trophy. It requires that the carcass be turned over to the DEEP for study, Dickson said. The agency also won't issue the permits if the farmer hasn't shown that they took measures to prevent the damage with non-lethal measures.
“We've got checks and balances in place,” Dickson added.
Bear sightings have increased over the years
The DEEP estimated in March last year that the state is home to 1,000 to 1,200 bears in total.
“The breeding population of bears in CT is continuing on a longterm trend of expansion into more cities and towns,” the 2023 state of the bears report said. “Just 7 years ago, sows were reported in less than 50 towns, while over the last two years, sows have been reported in over 90 different towns.”
The majority of bear sightings in 2022 were in the western half of the state, especially in northwestern and north central Connecticut, according to DEEP data.
Those areas also unsurprisingly saw the highest instances of human-bear conflicts. Human and bear conflicts have ballooned from less than a thousand in 2015 to now thousands each year, according to DEEP data.
Conflicts involving trash made up the largest share of bear conflicts, according to the DEEP, while bird feeders made up around a quarter.
And while compared with grizzlies, black bears rarely attack humans, the DEEP noted two attacks by bears on humans were reported in 2022.