'It's a great time to be a bear': Biologist explains population trends as hibernation ends

EMILY BRIGHT: This is Minnesota Now. I'm Emily Bright in for Nina Moini. Thanks for joining us. It is the time of year when bears are coming out of hibernation, looking around for their next meal. Maybe you've already seen a bear this season or heard of one in the neighborhood. And we're not just talking about people who live in Northern Minnesota. There have been a few bear sightings in the greater Twin Cities metro this year. Well, joining us now to talk about the state of bears in Minnesota is Andy Tri. He is the project leader for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Andy, thanks for talking with me.

ANDY TRI: Happy to be here.

EMILY BRIGHT: So paint the picture for us. What is happening this time of year? Bears are emerged from their dens. Is that right?

ANDY TRI: Yeah, one of the many signs of spring is when we start to get calls about bears knocking birdfeeders down, unfortunately.

[LAUGHTER]

And so, these animals are super cool. There's really only an abundant amount of food for them for about 3 and 1/2 months of the year. We get berries in July or so. And then, there's abundant food from then until right about September or October. And then everything starts to crisp up, dry up and get ready for autumn. And so they pack on all of their pounds in that time of year and then entered the den and don't eat. They don't drink.

And they enter this state of torpor where they're relaxed and not moving around a whole lot. And then right about, oh, the end of May, early April, is when they start to get moving again. The days are getting longer, and they'll start to do what we call bear yoga. So we have some cameras outside the dens, and you can watch these bears' muscles get going again, stretching, Downward Facing Bear is a really popular pose.

[LAUGHTER]

And their metabolism is starting to wake up. And so they're not super hungry when they first emerge, but it's getting to be about that time. Usually around tax day is when we start prompting people to pull their bird feeders in because the bears are getting hungry. And if they've gotten a snack from your bird feeder before, they'll certainly come back looking for that snack.

EMILY BRIGHT: And why wouldn't You? What is the bear population like right now in Minnesota?

ANDY TRI: We're in a really good spot. For some historical context here, we peaked around 25,000 bears back at the late '90s, early 2000s. And then the population dropped by half around about 2013 or so. That was intentional. We had planned to reduce the bear population just because there was lots of property damage and crop issues and that sort of thing. But that was below where we wanted to be. So we took the Goldilocks approach, and we're at a happy medium in there. So we're somewhere around 14,000 to 20,000, give or take, at a statewide level. And things are in good shape if you're a bear, for sure.

EMILY BRIGHT: How does the DNR track bears?

ANDY TRI: We use population models, primarily. And so every year when we have a hunting season, all of the hunters are required to send in a tooth. And so you can learn a lot from the tooth. You can section it. So you cut it the long way.

EMILY BRIGHT: Huh!

ANDY TRI: And you can read the rings inside like tree rings, essentially. You stain it and mount it on a slide, and you can see how old the was and then when they had litters of cubs because the ring spacing will be narrow when they had those cubs because there's lots of energy required for lactating mothers. And so you'll be able to pick out those cub years versus when they have yearlings or are not with bears because they're much wider, much like drought and wet years for trees.

EMILY BRIGHT: I have learned something today. This is so interesting. So what can you tell me about bears expanding into the suburbs? And is that even a new thing?

ANDY TRI: It's not a new thing, but there's a lot of things working that makes it feel like a new thing. So I grew up in the North end of the Twin Cities in Oak Grove, and never in my life would I figured we'd be dealing with bears there. And embarrassingly, I got a text from my dad.

EMILY BRIGHT: Embarrassing, huh?

ANDY TRI: Yeah, I got a text from my dad a few years ago that a bear had knocked over the bird feeder in the backyard. It's like, oh, gosh, I'm getting bear complaints from my own father. That's problematic. But what seems to have happened slowly through time is that people have become just more tolerant of bears. We value bears more than we did in the '60s, '70s, and '80s as just a piece of the landscape. And that tolerance and lack of, basically, killing bears just because they're in your yard has allowed that population to very slowly expand.

And so it's moved from the South end of Pine County, so Hinckley, Sandstone, that kind of country, all the way down to Maple Grove, Rogers. Right now there's a small population of bears down in the Rochester area, southeastern Minnesota, that bluffy country. But we have bear sightings all over the Twin Cities, at least on the outer ring of the suburbs. And it's mostly because people are tolerant of them, and we make pretty good food.

We like to be in places with lots of oak trees. Oaks are really important for bears, and we also generate bird food, trash. We like to do nice landscaping around our homes, and often there are fruit trees involved, apples, cherries, raspberry bushes, blueberry bushes, all the things that bears also like to eat. So you have essentially a slowly moving population-- or I should say geographic range mixed with increased human tolerance.

And the other thing is detectability. We have more people in Minnesota than ever before, and lots of people have these doorbell cameras or security systems that have gotten really cheap. And so now we'll get calls like, hey, I had a bear walking through my yard in Hugo last night. Well, they probably have been for the last 10 or 12 years, but you have a new Ring camera or a Blink system or something like that. And now you're just observing them. So lots of things going on for sure.

EMILY BRIGHT: Including delicious landscaping. So what can people do if they see a bear?

ANDY TRI: Sure, so it depends on the situation. The first thing is just not be afraid. These are big animals. Yeah, if they wanted to they could harm us. But in general, black bears are pretty docile critters. We go out in the winter time, and we work up these bears in their dens. We'll give them a bit of anesthetic medicine to put them under anesthesia. But we certainly couldn't do that if we were working with grizzly bears. And so they're literally a different animal. And so 99 times out of 100, you make some noise and be scary and stand your ground, and that bear is going to flee.

That said, if there's a situation where there is a bear in your yard and you're in the house or in a safe place, basically, wait for it to leave. Or you can make your yard not a nice place for bears, make a lot of noise, be scary. And then figure out what the bear was drawn to in the first place and remove it. Generally, these are bird feeders, barbecue grills that aren't clean. The grease trap on your grill often doesn't get cleaned as much as it should. My labrador loves to find that little grease can on my deck. And then making sure those garbage cans are secured and put away until the morning of trash pickup. And that's going to reduce a lot of those bears coming through the yard for what they're looking for.

EMILY BRIGHT: In our last minute, what will you be looking out for bears this spring and summer? I know last year they had a really poor berry season. That certainly affected the bears. What are you looking for this year?

ANDY TRI:

EMILY BRIGHT: Absolutely. So primarily, we track the foods. We track what the bear population is doing, and we have a number of bears collared across the state to track their reproduction and survival. But yeah, last year was one of the worst food years that we've had on record. And it led to a lot of human-bear conflict. But my guess is, given how mild the winter was and how spring is looking nice, as long as we don't have a super bad drought, we should have a more normal year this year.

The other good-- the bright spot here is that we had a lot of people showing lots of pictures of females with cubs at those hunter baits, suggesting really good reproduction out there on the landscape. So it's a great time to be a bear for sure.

EMILY BRIGHT: Well, Andy, thank you for your time.

ANDY TRI: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

EMILY BRIGHT: Andy Tri is the bear project leader with the Minnesota DNR.