Human Run-Ins With Bears May Portend Deeper Changes
By KIRK JOHNSON
Published: July 27, 2011
Colorado Springs -- Griffin W. Smith of Colorado Springs surprised a black bear in his kitchen last week. The bear was drinking from a dog dish. “But when a bear is in your kitchen, it seems bigger,” said Mr. Smith, 21, a biology major who was at home last week from college when he came downstairs for breakfast and found a black bear by the refrigerator, slurping from the dog’s dish.
...The intensified level of conflict is also spurring new research that is challenging some long-held assumptions about bears, notably the idea that bear population is the key variable. As solitary and often nocturnal creatures — unlike, say, elk, which herd together and can be easily counted — bear numbers are guesses at best, scientists say, especially for poorly studied species like the black bear. And shifting patterns of bear behavior, they say, like bears’ learning new feeding habits, could be even more important than population trends.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/28/us/28bears.html
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Bear human conflicts
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