Animals / Black bears living near human settlements in the USA are becoming nocturnal, inactive and obese *
Good neighbor, sometimes. black bear A reversal of the normal bearish behavior
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A stuffed animal in New Jersey, with the fur of a bear that was hunted last week. Wild animals prefer to hunt today in the garbage piles
Last week, as far as the New Jersey butchers who specialize in game meat, as well as taxidermists in the state, was crowned as the busiest week of the year. For the first time in 33 years, more than 5,000 hunters received a license to shoot bears over six days in the northwest of the country.
According to the "New York Times", the state's Department of Fish and Wildlife has set a goal: reducing the bear population by about 500 individuals. At the same time, by the way, the deer hunting season continued.
It's not just the New Jersey prairies where wild animals roam.
In Los Angeles, raccoons are settling and across the US, a variety of animals that once escaped from humans - including cougars, coyotes, wolves, deer, wild cats and raccoons - are discovering that the prairies offer a wealth of options and many of them have moved to hunt in garbage piles instead of in the forests.
The phenomenon has become so widespread that environmental researchers are examining the new relationships between animals and humans, and what needs to be done to maintain the boundaries between the two worlds. "We are creating animals that are no longer wild animals, and that is not good for them or for us," David Baron, author of the book in the Garden "The Beast", which deals with the new relationship between humans and animals, told the British "Guardian".
Since the beginning of the 19th century, says Baron, wild animals and humans have not been found in such close proximity. The main reason is the suburban expansion into places that were previously uninhabited. Wildlife, for their part, have a hard time resisting the readily available supply of scraps in garbage cans and even tasty pets.
But there are also other factors. Since 1990, in response to public pressure, California, Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, Arizona, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Washington have passed laws restricting the hunting or trapping of wild cats, bears, beavers, foxes, wolves, and cougars, which has contributed to an 8% decline in hunting over the past decade.
And so, a variety of wild animals became a common sight in urban areas. Black bears exist in Boston suburbs, for the first time in 200 years; In New Jersey, their population has increased 20 times in the last 30 years, and its size is estimated at about 3,300 individuals. As part of the hunting week, which received severe criticism from opponents, 61 bears were killed on Monday alone.
Coyotes also breed, preying on unwary pets and chickens. In 1997, a coyote entered the federal building in Seattle, passed the reception and entered the elevator.
In Florida, the alligator population has grown at an unprecedented rate.
Baron describes the US as "a country where people build new homes on undeveloped land, pay to preserve the open space near them, attract animals into their yards, and by embracing nature and wildlife change the nature of what they call nature." He believes that the US is conducting a "huge and largely unintended experiment", and claims that humans will have to change their behavior - and may be forced to drive the wild animals out of their artificial habitat in the prairies.
Experiments in the field are underway: in Idaho and Montana, for example, recorded sounds of gunshots and car traffic are used to prevent bears and other wild animals from entering residential areas. "We must manage nature to leave it to its own devices," concludes Baron.
Who needs a winter den when there is a litter box
Henry Fountain New York Times
Adults in the US are getting fatter and fatter. Their children spend all day in front of the television. Even their pets are overweight. Now it turns out that the American way of life, one of whose main components is the consumption of fast food, is also harming the bears.
A study of a population of black bears in the state of Nevada reveals that the bears that live in and near cities and towns are less active than the bears that live in open areas. The "urban" bears have to spend less time looking for food and spend fewer days in their winter dens. The reduced activity and available food make these bears fatter.
According to the authors of the study, Dr. John Beckman and Dr. Joel Berger from the US Wildlife Conservation Society, the reason for this lies in the waste piled up near fast food restaurants and residential neighborhoods. Many bears in the western United States are abandoning their normal habitats and moving to patrol backyards and parking lots in search of edible garbage. "For the bears, manure is probably the best food resource," said Dr. Beckman. "It exists all year round, in the same place, and is renewed after use."
This is most noticeable in the Lake Tahoe area, on the Nevada-California border. That's where Dr. Beckman and Dr. Berger chose to conduct their research. The researchers attached collars with transmitters to 58 bears, and examined the animals' activity patterns for several weeks. They discovered that the bears were divided into two groups: "village bears", who spend almost all of their time in the wild, and "city bears", who live in residential areas, often right under the noses of the residents.
In the fall, the researchers followed some of the bears for 24 hours straight, with the aim of studying their foraging habits. In the case of the urban bears, Dr. Beckman said, this meant walking from one parking lot to another at night while the bears rummaged through containers and trash cans in search of dinner.
A black bear that gets fat for the winter devours up to 20,000 calories a day. The researchers found that the village bears, forced to scour large areas in search of pine cones, berries or the occasional prey, spent over 13 hours a day searching for food. The city bears spent much less time searching - about 8.5 hours a day on average.
The city bears, Dr. Beckman and Dr. Berger discovered, actually became nocturnal animals: they rested during the day and looked for food at night, apparently to avoid encountering humans. This is a reversal of the normal bearish behavior.
According to Dr. Beckman, researchers often found city bears sleeping under a tree or down the river. But they also heard reports of people opening their bedroom door one morning and discovering a "brown lump" in the hallway - a bear that had raided the kitchen and rested after a satisfying meal.
Since the dung reserves, unlike the natural food reserves, do not decrease in winter, the city bears stayed in their winter dens much less than the country bears; The difference reached an average of 42 days. Some urban bears didn't even have winter dens. "A bear that eats from a garbage can should never stop," said Dr. Beckman. "He just eats more and more."
An adult black bear weighs an average of 100 to 135 kilograms. According to Dr. Beckman, one in four black bears that lived in urban areas weighed more than 180 kilograms. Some bears reached a weight of 230 and even 270 kilograms.
As far as the researchers know, excess weight in itself is not dangerous from a health point of view. The problem associated with regularly eating human waste is the frequent encounter with humans. In this conflict, the bears usually lose. The bear that raided the kitchen, for example, was destroyed. Many other bears run over. About 300 black bears live in Nevada, and every year ten bears are killed on average by being hit by cars.
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