Black bear sightings are on the rise in southern Wisconsin. Over the last couple of weeks, black bears have been spotted in Waukesha County, Mount Horeb and the Madison area.
I met UW wildlife biologist Timothy Van Deelen at a Pheasant Branch Conservancy northwest of Madison to talk about the trends. He says that bears are showing up because young ones are striking out on their own this time of year.
“They’re born that first winter in the den with mother. And then the second winter they spend with mother again. So that following spring they’re either pushed out or a switch flips in their brain and they have to find their own home range. The big male bears are somewhat territorial, so they’ll keep the younger bears moving and they have to make their way either overlapping with the home ranges of other bears or finding places that haven’t been claimed yet,” Van Deele explains.
And Van Deelen says southern Wisconsin is looking more like bear habitat than it did in the past.
“I mean, you can see that here — the brushy fence rows over there. You’ve got a wetland and the shrubbery is kind of moving into the farm field,” Van Deelen says.
He and his students have studied bear habitat.
"We found that black bears in Wisconsin were associated with those wetland forest areas. In the heat of summer it’s probably no surprise why, right? You’re wearing a big heavy black fur coat. You want to go someplace where it’s cool and shady," he says.
Van Deelen’s research has included radio tracking young bears.
"You could kind of see on a map that they would use the patches of forest as sort of a stepping stone," Van Deelen says. "[One bear in particular] went from patch to patch to patch and then ran out of patches of forests in the middle of agriculture and turned around and retraced its path and then tried a different direction. So at some point, those patches of forest or heavy cover become more frequent or a network forms, and young bears find it."
Van Deelen thinks seeing bears in southern Wisconsin should be celebrated. Humans just need to learn how to coexist with them.
"It's like any animal. You don't want to corner it. You don't want to challenge it, and you don't want to make it feel threatened. So if you're hiking in a place where there might be bears — if you are with a couple of people — [make] some noise so that you don't surprise it. And I think if you live in a place where bears are starting to show up, you do what people in northern Wisconsin have been doing for decades — just keep your trash covered, keep the dog food covered," Van Deelen explains. "If you've got a garage, bring trash inside. Take down your bird feeders in the spring when the bears begin showing up."
Another tip: if you see a bear in southern Wisconsin, report it to the DNR using this form. That’s helpful as the agency track bears’ movements.
_
