Learning to live with the state’s official animal.
Our state animal is a lot like us: persevering, highly adaptable, and occasionally misunderstood, with a habit of packing on extra pounds in
the winter. “The black bear is a really good symbol for West Virginians,”
says Colin Carpenter, black bear project leader for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources. “It’s an animal that has come through a lot and prospered.”
Chosen as the state animal in 1955, though not officially adopted by the Legislature until 1973, black bears haven’t always thrived in West Virginia, Carpenter says. Prior to the 1980s, the state’s bear population dipped below 500. “Bears were confined to about 10 of our eastern mountain counties—
not just because of large-scale timber harvest in the 1800s and 1900s but also because of persecution from homesteaders, who saw bears as a threat to their crops and livestock,” he says. “But over time, our culture has changed. A conservation ethic has developed. Our forests have come back and our attitude toward black bears has softened.”
Today, West Virginia’s black bear population is over 10,000 and is rapidly expanding westward. Hunters have now harvested bears in nearly every one of West Virginia’s 55 counties. As the statewide bear population grows, Carpenter says education is key to living harmoniously with our bruin brethren. “We have bears showing up in places where they haven’t been for 100 or more years and we have people entering our state who haven’t spent
their whole lives around bears,” Carpenter says. “They’re not thinking about how their unsecured trash is an attractant.”
That’s another similarity between bears and us: When they catch a whiff of something tasty, they just can’t help themselves. Enter nuisance bear complaints, hundreds of which make their way to the Division of Natural Resources each year.
Keeping Bears Wild
Chris Ryan, the DNR’s supervisor of game management services, began his career at the agency in 1998 as a bear biologist and nuisance bear trapper. Ryan says nuisance bear complaints most commonly occur when bears discover human food sources and cause damage to trash cans, bird feeders, pet food containers, and agricultural products.
As bear sightings become more common throughout West Virginia’s 1.1 million acres of national forests, nearly every resident has a “bear story” of some sort, Ryan says. But when the bear story begins with an artificial food source, it almost always has an unhappy ending. “A fed bear is a dead bear,” as the saying goes, and once bears discover an artificial food source, they’re
unlikely to leave on their own.
Nuisance activity peaks in the spring when bears emerge from their winter dens in search of food, as well as in the fall during years of mast failure, when bears have to roam farther in search of food. But it’s not just pet food, birdseed, and garbage that lure black bears to less-than-ideal areas. Other attractants include charred food on grills and barbecue pits, compost
piles containing sweets and meat products, and, worst of all, table scraps intentionally placed outside for wildlife—an illegal contribution to a bear’s diet, by the way.
“There’s this attitude of, ‘We’ve encroached on their environment, so the least we can do is feed them,'” says Ellen Hrabovsky, chair of West Virginia’s Master Naturalist State Advisory Committee. “But you aren’t doing bears any favors by letting them get into your garbage or putting food out for them.”
Ryan says most West Virginians recognize that the vast majority of nuisance bear complaints are preventable. Because of West Virginia’s liberal hunting seasons and the educational efforts of scientists, hunters, and conservationists throughout the state, nuisance calls have actually decreased over the past 10 years despite the large bear population. “Our goal is to remind people that if we want to keep our state animal wild and free, we have to stop nuisance activity before it ever starts,” Ryan says.
Carpenter says a multistate social media campaign and website are in the works to provide residents of West Virginia and neighboring states tips for minimizing bear nuisance activity. “We’re lucky that black bears are docile
and do very well around people, and we don’t have too many negative interactions on a yearly basis,” he says. “But at the same time, we want people to be proactive and keep in mind that bears are wild. They can be unpredictable. When it comes to being ‘bear aware,’ there are basic things all West Virginians should know.”
“A Symbol of Wildness”
Black bears might be a nuisance in the most literal sense, especially if you ask someone who’s recently experienced property damage, but they’re a necessary nuisance. It’s not just because they’re the state animal or because they embody the tenacity, strength, and independence that fill the annals of
West Virginia history. Black bears have a significant impact on the state’s ecology. “Bears are great seed dispersers,” Ryan says. “They consume a lot of seeds and spread them across the landscape. And although they mainly eat vegetation, they do occasionally eat small, decaying animals, called carrion, which keeps the forest floor clean.”
Then there’s the social and economic impact of bear hunting: Not only is bear hunting a $51 million industry in West Virginia and integral to the DNR’s bear management efforts, but it’s also a family tradition, passed from generation to generation. “Bears were never completely extirpated from
West Virginia, so they’ve been hunted and used by people for as long as people have been around,” Carpenter says. “People eat bear meat, obviously, but bear fat can also be rendered and used for cooking,
waterproofing, and other things. People have been using bears for those types of things for a very, very long time.”
For many West Virginians, one of the greatest things about the black bear is what it represents: “a symbol of wildness,” as Carpenter says. That’s exactly
what Hrabovsky loves most. It’s why she steers clear of the woods near her home at dusk and locks up food for her two dogs in the garage, remembering the time she left the garage door open one evening and a bear almost came through.
It’s also why she regularly leads nature walks for kids at the West Virginia Botanic Garden, hoping to instill in them what she learned about bears—and all wildlife—as a young girl. “My grandfather was a consummate conservationist and a great hunter, and he taught me to respect wildlife from the time I could barely walk,” she says.
Now, when she leads nature walks, the first thing Hrabovsky does is ask the children to stop and listen. “We’re entering somebody’s home. The forests are wonderful places and great places to have fun, but in a way that respects the nature that’s there,” she says.
And if there’s one West Virginia animal that deserves respect, Hrabovsky says, it’s the black bear. “They’re a part of our ecosystem. If we want to maintain anything in our wild, wonderful state, we’ve got to respect the needs of our ecosystem.”
So lock up your pet food and trash, take down your bird feeders, and keep a lookout for your very own bear story—and, in Ryan’s words, “Keep our state animal wild and free.”
This story was originally published in the March 2017 issue of Wonderful West Virginia.
written by Katherine Pyles