BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
GREEN COVE SPRINGS— A state bear biologist said the number of bear encounters reported by Kingsley Lake residents have decreased since the area’s homeowners have taken steps to secure their garbage.
Over the summer, Kingsley Lake homeowners reported seeing bears rummaging through garbage or on their properties
Mike Orlando, the assistant bear program coordinator for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission told Clay County Commissioners that his agency’s biologists met with residents about steps they could take to reduce the encounters.
Orlando said most bears venture into neighborhoods looking for easy access to food like garbage, pet food or bird seed, and that the best way to reduce bear encounters is to cut off access to those food sources.
“For bears and other critters like raccoons, foxes and coyotes, the source of our conflicts come in the form of residential garbage, so really the easiest thing that we tell people to do is just secure their garbage,” he said.
Orlando said the most convenient way residents can shield their garbage from wildlife is to keep the trash inside, like in a garage or storage shed, until the day of pick up. He added that retrofitting trash containers or obtaining bear-resistant garbage cans are additional options.
Bears in Camp Blanding
Orlando said that Florida’s black bear population is over 4,000.
“But the area that you guys are in has the most bears of any sub-population in the state,” he told commissioners, “so one of the things that we’ve been dealing with over the years is the increase, not only in bears, but humans in the state. We have roughly around 21 million people now in the state.”
He said the Central Florida Bear Management Unit, which stretches from Clay County to Osceola County, and includes Camp Blanding and the Ocala National Forest, is home to around 30% of Florida’s bears.
“Camp Blanding obviously is one of the large tracks of land that bears do occupy,” he said. “We had a research project out there. We collared a bunch of bears and followed them around.”
Orlando added that the animals migrate north and south between the Ocala National Forest and the Osceola National Forest, east of Lake City. He showed a chart to commissioners that revealed an uptick in sick and dead bears reported to Fish and Wildlife. He said traffic crashes involving the animals are on the rise.
“Our Ocala bears are moving up through this area to get to the Osceola area and we expect that to continue indefinitely,” he said. “So, you’re going to see more bears, and then of course as more people are moving around on roads you’re going to end up having bears hit by cars. It’s inevitable, but we try to do as much as we can to reduce that.”
Eating habits of bears
Orlando said that bears get around 80% of their diet from plants, with the remainder coming from mostly insects.
“They do eat things like armadillos, opossums and that sort of thing,” he said, “but when they start getting close to human habitat, they actually start to move to the easy source of a meal like pet food, bird seed, and mostly garbage.”
Orlando said that now, bears are going through fall hypophagia, a period of overeating in anticipation of a lack of food during the winter.
“Normally they get about 5,000 calories a day,” he said. “In the fall, right now, they’re trying to take in 20,000 calories a day, and they’re eating about 20 hours a day.”
He added that like black bears in Tennessee and Pennsylvania, Florida bears do hibernate.
“It’s not as long as in Pennsylvania or Alaska,” he said, “but they certainly do (hibernate).”
‘We don’t like to write citations’
Orlando pointed out that in Florida, it is illegal to feed bears, either intentionally or unintentionally. He added that his agency issues citations to repeat offenders who do not secure their trash.
He said that when a homeowner fails to secure his garbage, the resident will likely first get a visit from a state biologist, advising him to make his trash inaccessible to the animals.
“If that doesn’t work, then a law enforcement officer will likely show up and say: Hey, we’ve had problems. You need to keep this stuff secured,” Orlando said. “Then if that still doesn’t happen, that’s when things like citations come out.”
“We don’t like to write citations,” he added. “We don’t like to get people in trouble.”
Orlando also said that in response to increasing bear encounters in the Wekiva River basin, Seminole County enacted an ordinance that required residents in that area to secure their trash. He said that as a result, bear encounters there have decreased over the last five years.
He also said that Seminole County, in addition to Collier, Lake and Marion counties offer bear-resistant garbage cans to residents at a discount.
Bears and dogs do not mix
The biologist said that as bears move into residential areas, they lose their natural fear of humans.
He added that if a resident encounters a bear, the person should make himself known to the animal.
“If the bear is at a distance, put your hands above your head; make yourself look larger and then actually talk to the bear,” he said. “Clap your hands, that sort of thing. You don’t want to startle anything like a bear, so try to give it a heads up that you’re nearby and most of the time the bear’s going to see you and take off running. If it doesn’t, if it stands still, slowly back away to a secure location. Get in your car, your house or that sort of thing and then give the agency a call.”
Orlando added that dogs and bears to not mix.
“Dogs and bears don’t like each other, so it’s best, if you have a small dog, pick that dog up,” he said of contacts with bears. “That’s really (true) with any wild animal. If you have small children or dogs with you, pick them up and move to a secure location.”
