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Lyddie: Voices from the Field - Chapter 01 Black Bear Behavior

The story in the book about a black bear taking advantage of a human-associated food source is a real-life situation and is something that takes places almost every day in Massachusetts. Black bears are a species that is driven by food. They are opportunistic omnivores, meaning they will eat just about anything, but the vast majority of their diet is plant based. Additionally, each winter, bears hibernate as a means of dealing with the lack of food available to them in winter. This means bears must consume all the food and calories they need to survive the entire year in the 7 to 8 months they’re active, because they don’t eat or drink all winter. As a result, bears are constantly searching for high calorie food sources and will take advantage of any food they can find around people’s homes. Unfortunately, this can lead to conflict with people.

Now a days, the common food sources bears take advantage of are bird feeders, garbage, and other foods around homes and businesses. Recently, bears have increasingly been breaking into chicken coops and bee hives they find around people’s homes. Bears can also cause a lot of damage in corn fields. The more access bears have to these foods the more time they spend looking for them and this can cause the problems to escalate. Bear occasionally even enter homes to find food as described in the story. One of the biggest jobs of bear biologists across the country is getting people to remove and secure the food sources around their homes and businesses to prevent these sorts of conflict from occurring. It really is up to people to do so, because bears will be bears, and no bear can resist a tasty pot of oatmeal if it is available to them.