Tolland: Bear With Us

There are not many bears in Tolland or all of Eastern Connecticut, for now.

The black bear population is booming in northwestern Connecticut, however, and it is only a matter of time before it expands east of the Connecticut River, too.

Jason Hawley, a wildlife biologist and bear expert for the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, told a gathering of Tolland folks Thursday that their town has plenty of good natural habitat to support a bear population. “It’s just not here yet.”

With the number of bears in the state growing at a rate of 10 to 15 percent each year, there are likely to be more bear sightings in the future than the 17 reported in Tolland in the last 12 months.

Hawley, who spent much of the last four months finding and crawling into bear dens around the state, said a bumper crop of acorns has helped the state’s black bears flourish recently, continuing a trend that began in the 1980s.

The growth has led to “well over 3,000 sightings [of black bear] this year,” Hawley said. Conservatively estimated, there are 400 to 500 bears in the state right now, he said.

The problem, of course, is that the bear habitat is increasingly overlapping with the human habitat – a fact that requires Hawley and his fellow DEP wildlife experts to spend more and more time managing bear problems.

Most of the trouble is in Farmington Valley towns like Simsbury, Granby and Canton where the bear and human population densities are relatively high. Reports of damage caused by bears have become so common there, Hawley said, that the DEP no longer keeps track of the number of destroyed bird feeders, for example. Home and auto damage is becoming more common, he said.

Black bears are mild tempered, shy and solitary animals with few natural predators and a high survival rate from birth. They eat mostly skunk cabbage, berries and acorns, and males can grow up to 600 pounds. Hawley routinely finds, tranquilizes and handles the bears in the winter, when he fits the females with devices that will allow their movements to be tracked.

Male bears roam over areas as large as 50 square miles, he said, while females and their cubs typically stay in a six- or seven-square mile home range.

And though Hawley said “we have never had a bear attack or even be physical with a human in Connecticut,” their presence on people’s porches and decks is plenty scary and potentially dangerous.

That is likely why local authorities shot and killed a young bear in Tolland last year. Ear tags on the animal indicated that the DEP had relocated the bear twice before.

Hawley, who has responded to bear complaints in cities as well as rural communities, said he and his fellow wildlife managers do everything in their power to avoid having to kill a bear that has become overly fond of human habitat.

The wildlife officers typically trap the troublesome animal; mark it with special ear tags; then poke, shout at, pepper spray and otherwise try to persuade it to find a less irritating place to be. (The most effective bear bait, by the way, has proven to be jelly doughnuts from Dunkin Donuts, Hawley said. “They never eat the bagels.”)

It is currently illegal to hunt bear in Connecticut, but considering the alternatives in controlling their population, establishing a season “is something we will have to look at" in the future, Hawley said.

The most common cause of bears’ unnatural death now is trucks and cars. The number of road kill incidents has climbed steadily in concert with the bear population, from one incident in 1990 to more than 25 this year, Hawley said.

Hawley was invited to address the Tolland group by Conserving Tolland, a local organization that has promoted the passage of three referenda for the purchase of 1,200 acres of farm and forestland. About 60 people attended the free event, held at the Lodge in .

As a fundraiser, Conserving Tolland has developed a weatherproof walk book of local trails. It can be purchased for $12 at the the group’s president, Roseann Gottier, said.