Transcripts

text | pdf |

---

RACHEL REABE: Good afternoon, and welcome to our special Mainstreet broadcast from the International Wolf Center in Ely. I'm Rachel Reabe. We've traveled up to Minnesota's northeastern corner to discuss two of the state's most popular wild creatures. Last hour, we talked about wolves, and now we're turning our attention to bears. The black bear is hot. Just ask the Minnesota Science Museum, current host of bears, the most popular traveling exhibit it's ever hosted.

And just ask the Department of Natural Resources, which in recent years has dealt with record numbers of bear sightings and nuisance reports. In fact, as the bear population continues to rise, wildlife managers are asking themselves if they're still in control of these usually reclusive animals. We have a trio of black bear experts with us this afternoon at Ely to answer your bear questions. But first, this report from Mainstreet Radio's Leif Enger.

LEIF ENGER: In the 1970s, bear hunting got so popular, the DNR thought it had another timber wolf on its hands, a large, reclusive mammal being driven, if not to extinction, at least to scarcity. So in 1982, with about 8,000 Bears left, state wildlife managers decided to reduce the number of hunting permits. If they could have peaked ahead to 1999, they might have done the opposite.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

DAVE GARSHELIS: We'd probably have to harvest about 6,000 just to stabilize the population now.

[END PLAYBACK]

LEIF ENGER: DNR bear biologist Dave Garshelis has watched the animal's stunning resurgence. Like timber wolves, bears have expanded their range south and west into cornfield country and sometimes into suburban trash can country. Minnesota bears also have bigger than average families. Three cubs is normal here. But Garshelis says, at the heart of the bear revival is a change in humans.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

DAVE GARSHELIS: Sort of used to be that bears are a varmint. And if there was a bear around, you'd just kill it, and there was no questions asked about that. Most people don't feel very comfortable with that anymore, and most people will call the DNR, ask for advice. And even if the advice is, well, maybe you have to kill it, a lot of people still don't want to do that. And I think that mentality has changed certainly in the last 20 or 30 years.

[END PLAYBACK]

LEIF ENGER: It's not like the bear ever had the ruinous PR wolves once endured. Bears both powerful and clownish have been stumping around in American popular culture since America got a popular culture.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

SPEAKER 1: Remember, only you can prevent forest fires.

SPEAKER 2: I'm smarter than the average bear. [GIGGLES]

[END PLAYBACK]

LEIF ENGER: In fact, bears have been seen as cuddly since long before Teddy Roosevelt's mercy to a hunted cub gave us the world's reigning currency of comfort. Garshelis says, even as research yields new insights into the bruin mind, part of the intrigue of bears may be traced to mythology thousands of years old.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

DAVE GARSHELIS: They do have this appearance. They have five fingers and five toes. And when they stand up, they're about our height, and they look kind of like us. And particularly, when you take the skin off a bear, it really does kind look like a person. There's all this folklore about people going down into dens with bears and people marrying bears and being in this underground bear world and going back and forth between the human world and the bear world.

CLOVER LUTTER: Lately, it's been the dopey-looking bears who used to do a lot of the more realistic, serious bears, like this Redwood piece. But just recently, these whimsical bears have really taken off.

[END PLAYBACK]

LEIF ENGER: Clover Lutter shows off dozens of life-sized chainsaw sculptures in the yard of her dad's business on the tourist strip north of Brainerd. Her dad, AJ Lutter, was 1988's National Chainsaw Carving champion. The sculptures in the yard, 90% bears.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

LEIF ENGER: What do you think it is about a bear that has that sort of appeal?

CLOVER LUTTER: I don't know. I think it's like having a really big dog, if that makes any sense. If you take a big dog for a walk, you get more looks, and you feel better. And I don't know, just something about having something big and powerful. But most of these Bears have big dopey-looking faces, and so they're big and powerful but friendly, kind of like my dad.

[END PLAYBACK]

LEIF ENGER: By the late '80s, the DNR was no longer worried about black Bears. In fact, they wanted to level them off a little, say, at about 10,000, which is coincidentally about as many as AJ Lutter has carved. Again, if only they could have peaked ahead. The nearest you'll get to marrying a bear these days is a visit to the Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary. From the Twin Cities, drive north to Virginia, then Cook, fill with gas, and then drive north some more.

The first person you'll see at the sanctuary is intern Jason Pautz. One of his jobs is to protect cars in the gravel parking lot from playful bears, which explains the bucket he's carrying.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

JASON PAUTZ: Sometimes bears see cars as their toys or personal toys because they like to be on top of things. So get other perspectives, you know. Well, what we do is we put out buckets of scat, which other bears don't like. It works as a good bear deterrent.

[END PLAYBACK]

LEIF ENGER: The Shute Sanctuary is a peculiar hybrid of nature park and zoo. It's a clearing in the woods 200 yards in diameter with a few RVs for the volunteers and dozens of stumps where food is laid out for the bears. There are far more bears than volunteers.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

KLARI LEA: Never let your guard down. Don't get the impression that these bears are tame.

[END PLAYBACK]

LEIF ENGER: Klari Lea, a co-founder with her husband of the American Bear Association, issues safety tips to a visitor.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

KLARI LEA: Should one approach you, what you need to do is put your arms up, make yourself look bigger. Talk to the bear. Talk firmly and softly and completely move back.

[END PLAYBACK]

LEIF ENGER: The sanctuary's founder, Vince Shute, was a logger whose camp boasted such tempting food, it was persistently raided by black bears. By 1952, Shute had shot so many of them, he was beginning to feel regret. So he put away his rifle and started putting out donuts. A few years ago, he turned over the sanctuary to the association, which has continued against convention to feed the bears.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

SPEAKER 3: I don't think the ranger's going to this, Yogi.

KLARI LEA: We do not promote the feeding of wild bears where they associate food with people. Now, you're wondering why in the world are we feeding? Well, the reason is, is there's almost a 50-year history of feeding at this site and what inadvertently happen--

[END PLAYBACK]

LEIF ENGER: The defense of bear-feeding tops Klari Lea's talking points, whether alone with a reporter or with a crowd of 50 on the sanctuary's viewing platform. But few of the sanctuary's 20,000 annual visitors are bothered by the practice. In fact, many bring scraps or bags of dog food to help out.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

SPEAKER 4: I love the gentleness, the mysteriousness of them.

SPEAKER 5: Oh, they're not mysterious. I think everybody looks at that and remembers their childhood when they were a child and they had a teddy bear. And they look at these black bears, and they think of their child. It's like, oh, I wish-- I want to hug it. And my fiance says, don't try it.

[END PLAYBACK]

LEIF ENGER: Below the platform, a dozen bears wander the clearing as if no one were watching. Most are black, a few are cinnamon or chocolate. A heavy brown bear, known as Carl, has curled up with a stash of shell peanuts brought by a visitor. At last count, Minnesota was home to 27,000 bears. Hunters here now take more bear than in any other state. Yet the DNR keeps revising its maximum population goal upward, and the bears keep barging past it. Biologist Dave Garshelis says, for better or worse, black bears have outgrown efforts to control them.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

DAVE GARSHELIS: There's a point where your government, Department of Natural Resources, cannot be responsible for handling this population. I mean, it's like, well, we tried, but it's just not possible. And maybe we shouldn't be looking to the DNR to manage something like this this closely.

[END PLAYBACK]

LEIF ENGER: DNR bear biologist Dave Garshelis. Leif Enger, Minnesota Public Radio.

RACHEL REABE: You're listening to a special Mainstreet broadcast from the International Wolf Center in Ely. I'm Rachel Reabe, and joining me are wildlife biologist Lynn Rogers, who has studied black bears for over 30 years, Dave Garshelis, the bear project leader from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and Bill Lea, president of the American Bear Association, which operates the Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary.

Good afternoon, gentlemen. Welcome to our program. Listeners, you can join our conversation by calling us at 1-800-537-5252. The number, again, 1-800-587-5252. Minnesotans love their bears until they invade their yard, their campsite, or their farm. Dave Garshelis, how many more bears do you think Minnesota can handle?

DAVE GARSHELIS: It's a difficult question. Basically, the population, what we estimate now is about 27,000 bears, increasing at about 7% a year, doubling every 8 or 10 years. People are going to have to put up with it, basically, because this is what we're stuck with. We can't really reduce the population. And when you say how many can we handle, it's just basically a public attitude towards bears.

And I think most people have a favorable attitude towards bears, but there's probably some things we could do better to keep bears away from people. And we could tolerate more Bears if people would do those simple things, like bringing your bird feeder during the summer and not keep out garbage during the summer.

RACHEL REABE: Lynn Rogers, do you think attitudes towards bears have changed in the 30 years since you've been working with them?

LYNN ROGERS: Yes, absolutely.

RACHEL REABE: In what way?

LYNN ROGERS: Well, when I first started working with them, it was actually in Michigan, catching and moving nuisance bears. I heard of everybody thought of bears as dangerous animals. And through the study, through my study, and getting things out through the media, and through a general-- better attitude towards predators in general across the country, bears aren't as feared as they were, and rightfully not so. Black bears have killed about 40 people this century across North America.

But when we compare that to other causes of death, like for each person killed by a black bear, 374 are killed by lightning, 90,000 by homicide, 190,000 by traffic deaths. Black bears are a very minor cause of mortality. And one of the biggest fears that people have is of mothers with cubs. And--

RACHEL REABE: Because we've heard that over and over again, don't go near a bear with cubs.

LYNN ROGERS: Yes. And when I started studying bears, that's one of the things I thought I knew because I'd heard that from the time I was little. Don't get between a mother and her cubs. But nobody has ever been killed by a mother black bear. This whole idea comes from grizzly bears, where 70% of the killings by grizzly bears are by mothers with cubs. And grizzly bears have killed-- well, I said 40 people by black bears across the country.

RACHEL REABE: In a century.

LYNN ROGERS: In this century. Grizzly bears, it's 80 people this century across North America, with only a small percentage of the number of grizzly bears compared to black bears.

RACHEL REABE: So you're saying that we don't need to fear a mother black bear and her cubs?

LYNN ROGERS: Not really. It was routine on my project to catch mothers-- I mean, catch cubs right in front of their mothers. In fact, it was routine if I'd be driving down the road. Cubs were so valuable for the research that I would just hit the brakes, jump out, chase the cubs to the nearest tree. They'd go up the tree, grab the cubs. They'd be screaming in my hand. I've never been attacked. And I did this many times. And nobody's ever been killed by a mother black bear.

RACHEL REABE: Let's go to our phone lines. Our number is 1-800-587-5252. And we have lots of people standing by on the telephone. We go first to Two Harbors, where Gordon is on the phone. Good afternoon, Gordon. Welcome to Mainstreet.

GORDON: Thanks for having me. I would just like to make the comment that with a lot of wildlife species, I don't think it's necessarily a number of overpopulation of animals but an overpopulation of people. It seems our population keeps doubling every 50 or 60 years and is pushing these animals into marginal habitats or increasing the amount of conflict we have with them. There seems to be no discussion in this country as to what our ultimate population limit should be. I guess that would be my comment.

I mean, I have no problem with hunting bears. I'm a hunter myself. But I just see more and more development and more and more people, whether it's on the roads or in the woods. At some point, something has to give. That's just my comment.

RACHEL REABE: Thank you for your comment, Gordon. Dave, we think of Northeastern Minnesota like this is bear central in Minnesota. And people, they hate to leave here without having at least one sighting of a black bear per vacation. But you told me actually the black bear has really-- it's expanded its range, and it's doing very well way out of the north woods.

DAVE GARSHELIS: That's right. Although we think of the north woods as, I guess, prime bear habitat, bears do great in places that people don't even picture seeing bears, like in little woodlots near cornfields. And in fact, cornfields are a lot better food source for bears than would be the north woods up here. I mean, it's a very rich food source. And bear reproduction for those bears that live around cornfields far exceeds the reproduction of bears that live in this area of Northern Minnesota.

LYNN ROGERS: In fact, I'd like to add to that, that the bear habitat that's left in North America is the habitat that did not make it as farmland. Anything that was good for farmland or cities has been turned over to people use. And our recreational areas across the country are the less fertile areas. So we've relegated bears to the areas where it's hardest for them to make a living.

RACHEL REABE: What's the territory up near or where you have your refuge, Bill?

BILL LEA: What is the territory?

RACHEL REABE: Woodsy?

BILL LEA: Oh, yeah, definitely. It's north woods. And Vince was a logger. And the Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary was an old logging camp. So we're in the heart of the north woods, heavily timbered.

RACHEL REABE: Have you seen a change in the last number of years about the number of bears coming in to be fed? Leif talked in his report, maybe 50 bears were there on a single day. Have you seen the numbers change as we see the population increase and increase?

BILL LEA: Actually, we have-- we've only been going there since '93 and have operated the sanctuary since '95. And our numbers really haven't changed that much. We have about 60 to 80 different bears that come in a year. And I believe that the reason we haven't seen a change is that at the sanctuary, we have reached our social carrying capacity. So they'll only tolerate so many, and we're at that level. And so we haven't seen this big increase in the number of bears, at least since '93, since we've been coming up here.

RACHEL REABE: Thank you. Our number 1-800-537-5252. We go to Marty in Northern Wisconsin. Good afternoon, Marty. Welcome to Mainstreet.

MARTY: Hi. Thank you very much. I have two questions, one for Lynn and then two for Dave and Bill. Lynn, I'm wondering if there's any explanation why the mama bears are having bigger broods. We have friends who have bears in their backyard a lot. And they generally come by with three cubs a year. Also, if there's any biological reason for that. And then here in Northern Wisconsin, bears can be hunted with dogs. I don't believe that's legal anymore in Minnesota.

For those who are unfamiliar with this practice, hounds are fit with radio collars. They're sent out into the woods to track down and chase a bear. The hunters remain in their trucks and drive up and down roads with a receiver, following the direction of the dogs. When they finally determine that the dog has treed or stopped the bear, the hunters get out of their trucks. They walk into the woods. They find the treed bear, shoot it out of the tree.

Sometimes the bear will die, sometimes it won't. Then it gets shot again or it gets in a tangle with the dogs. Ethically, it just seems pretty barbaric. And I'm just very curious about what the DNR representative and the gentleman from the Bear Association think of this practice of hunting bear.

RACHEL REABE: Let's start with that question first, and we'll go back to the question of the bigger broods. Dave, can you hunt bear with dogs in Minnesota?

DAVE GARSHELIS: No, it's illegal in Minnesota. But like the caller says, it is legal in Wisconsin. And there are other states that it is legal in as well. And it's just basically not a tradition in Minnesota. And those states that have it as a legal hunting method, it's been a tradition. And that's-- we can argue the ethics of hunting. In Minnesota, most hunters use bait, where they put out a pile of bait before the season starts, attract a bear, and then eventually shoot the bear, usually very early in the season, in the first couple of days. And a lot of people would say that is also unethical or barbaric, but it has developed as a tradition here.

RACHEL REABE: So people here can stomach that, putting bait out and then shooting the bear? Although they may say, dogs, radio collars, how terrible. So it's what we're used to. It's what we will accept.

DAVE GARSHELIS: It is. It's what you're used to. And the same thing with deer hunting. There's some states that use bait to hunt deer. And here, people would say, oh, you can't hunt deer over bait. That's ridiculous.

RACHEL REABE: Bill, any comments you have?

BILL LEA: I would say that the American Bear Association takes a neutral stance on hunting issues. We have both hunters and non-hunters in our organization, and we think it's a personal choice. And our philosophy is that both hunter and non-hunter benefits by becoming more knowledgeable and respecting the black bear. And that's what we concentrate, is on education.

RACHEL REABE: Well, Bill, if I was a bear hunter, and I managed to get a license, the first place I'd be heading is right outside the refuge in Orr. Is that a problem? Do you have people trying to hunt the land adjacent to you? Man, 50 bears passing back and forth for lunch and dinner would really be attractive to a hunter.

BILL LEA: Well, fortunately, most hunters are very ethical. And in fact, we find that when hunters find out that has happened, they are the most irate about it. So it is a problem. We have lost some bears. It's a small percentage of people that would ever do that. And what we're hoping is that both hunters or all hunters will realize the positives of learning about black bears and education about black bears, and that there would be some peer pressure of those few that are unethical that would come in and hunt right next to the sanctuary.

RACHEL REABE: Lynn Rogers, let's answer now. Her first question was, are the broods getting bigger? We always think mother bear, two cubs. Now, should we be thinking mother bear, three cubs as a norm?

LYNN ROGERS: No, I don't think they have gotten bigger. It's just that we have always thought that two cubs is a normal litter size for a bear because that's the number that was in the Walt Disney movies that a lot of us learned about bears from.

RACHEL REABE: OK, so that's where I got my education.

LYNN ROGERS: And out west where those movies were made, two cubs is the norm. But in the east, where there's a richer food supply, they've evolved a higher litter size. The normal litter size throughout the east is three. And Minnesota does not have the highest reproductive rate. That would be like in Pennsylvania, where they have so many kinds of oak and beech nuts and hickory nuts, such a rich food supply that they can mature sooner, reproduce more successfully. And there many other cubs have even four and sometimes five in a litter.

RACHEL REABE: So we're still two on the average in Minnesota. Dave, do you agree with that?

DAVE GARSHELIS: No, actually, Lynn's correct here that there are more three-cub litters in Minnesota than two. And Minnesota would be classified as an eastern state in this breakdown across the US. If you draw a line from Minnesota down to Texas and you go east from there, those states tend to have higher litters, which average somewhere around between two and a half and three. And the states west of that tend to have smaller litters, averaging much closer to two.

RACHEL REABE: We are broadcasting from the International Wolf Center in Ely. And we have a live audience this afternoon in our auditorium at the Wolf Center. Leif here in our audience.

LEIF ENGER: Yeah, I'm here with my [? Margaret ?] Ellis, who has a question on the possible establishment of a bear center, which has been the subject of considerable debate. [? Margaret? ?]

[? MARGARET ELLIS: ?] Thank you. Lynn Rogers, I understand that you would like to bring a bear center for research and education here to Ely. And my question is why you feel that this would be the best place to have such a center as opposed to other places. Thank you.

LYNN ROGERS: Oh, thank you. Yes, the reason for the bear center is, like you said, research and education and rehabilitation. We want to tell people about bears, learn more about bears. And if any cubs are orphaned, we want to help them get back into the wild. And the reason we think that Ely is the best place for that is we are here, the gateway to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. 300,000 people come through Ely each summer, and 60,000 of those are bound for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. And they want to know about bears when they're going to be going out into the wilderness and possibly encountering bears. And--

RACHEL REABE: What's the status of the bear center now? Is it up and running? Are you collecting money? Has it been established? Just where are you at in the process?

LYNN ROGERS: We're at the planning stage right now. And the LCMR, the Legislative Commission on Minnesota Resources had scheduled $80,000 for us. But we had such a good idea that other cities decided they wanted to have a bear center, too. And there was some controversy over should the money go to Ely or should it go to some other city. And the legislature then didn't want to make that decision. So they've turned that over to the DNR to decide where should the bear center be. And right now, the DNR is deciding what kind of process to use to make that decision.

RACHEL REABE: Dave Garshelis, you look confused. You don't think the DNR is working on it at this point?

DAVE GARSHELIS: Never heard of that, Lynn, that the DNR has anything to do with the bear center. And in fact, the way this thing started was not an idea from Ely but rather there was a bear center or a bear exhibit.

RACHEL REABE: Right, the one we talked about in the produced piece, this huge bear exhibit that's been so popular.

DAVE GARSHELIS: It started with the science museum, just as the Wolf Center started with the wolf exhibit from the science museum. And that exhibit now has sort of run its course, and they're looking for a permanent home for that exhibit. And they want to sell that exhibit to some city or some place for permanent exhibition. And there are some places that have started to become interested in that and are bidding on it. And one of the places, for example, is Yellowstone National Park.

And the exhibit has-- about two third of it is brown grizzly bear type things, and about one third of it is black bear. And one question is whether that exhibit should stay in Minnesota. And then if it does stay in Minnesota, should it be in Ely or there are a number of other cities that are interested in it? The DNR is not involved in this, as far as I know, in this decision at all.

LYNN ROGERS: Maybe Dave is working with bears where he should be, and that's very good, and is why he hasn't heard about it. But we have just received a letter from the commissioner's office in the DNR that they are trying to develop the process whereby to decide this thing that was dumped in their lap by the legislature. And the question of whether that exhibit should stay in Minnesota or not, I think most people in the room here from Minnesota would agree that it should be in Minnesota.

For one reason, that I was the scientific advisor on that project, and the black bear portion of it, it represents research done right here in Minnesota, in fact, right here around Ely. The background photos on that thing are Ely scenes and all. And so--

RACHEL REABE: So that makes sense to you that it should be in Ely.

LYNN ROGERS: Yes.

RACHEL REABE: We're going to continue this conversation. You're listening to a special Mainstreet Radio broadcast from the international Wolf Center in Ely. I'm Rachel Reabe. We were talking about black bears, one of the biggest and most loved creatures in the forest. My guests, Dave Garshelis, Bill Lea, and Lynn Rogers. MPR's Mainstreet Radio coverage of rural issues is supported by the Blandin Foundation, committed to strengthening communities through grant-making, leadership training, and convening. We'll be back with more of Mainstreet after a look at news and weather.

SPEAKER 6: The "New York Times" calls Francois Truffaut, one of the most lyrical filmmakers of our time. Find out why. Beginning Friday, the Oak Street Cinema proudly presents the complete Truffaut film series, a retrospective of 23 films from the director who helped create the French New Wave of the '50s and '60s and turned the film industry on its ear. For information, call the Oak Street Cinema at 612-331-3134. MPR members, bring a friend and get two for one tickets.

GRETA CUNNINGHAM: With news from Minnesota Public Radio, I'm Greta Cunningham. US House leaders are maneuvering to bring a patient's bill of writes directly to the House floor, bypassing committees that have failed to produce legislation. The move comes as two surveys find patients and doctors reporting widespread trouble getting needed care from HMOs. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, nearly 9 in 10 doctors reported frustration in dealing with managed care plans, although the survey also has found that doctors regularly step in to fight for care they believe is needed.

The Senate is opening its debate on a Republican plan to cut taxes by almost $800 billion over the next decade. President Clinton promises to veto the Republican plan if it reaches his desk in its present form. Some Democrats suggest a $500 billion cut would be both politically and fiscally more reasonable. But Clinton aides say he'd reject that one as well. Surgeon General David Satcher calls suicide a serious public health threat, and he's launching a nationwide education effort to fight the problem.

A report released today by Satcher and Tipper Gore urges school counselors, parents, and even hairdressers to recognize people at risk and get help. The report shows white men, 65 and older, are the most likely to commit suicide. It also shows the suicide rate has doubled since 1980 among children between 10 and 14 years of age. In regional news, Minnesota State Fair officials have decided not to recycle polystyrene cups used by fairgoers at this year's State Fair. Spokesman Jerry Hammer says the fair spent $60,000 recycling cups last year and only got back $1,100 on the cups.

Instead, cups used during this year's fair will be taken to a northern states power company plant to be burned as fuel. There is a heat advisory in effect for the southeastern portion of the state this afternoon through tomorrow. It will be very warm today throughout the state of Minnesota with high temperatures from 85 in the north to 95 in the south. There's also a chance of an afternoon thunderstorm statewide.

Checking current conditions, Rochester reports sunshine in 81. It's sunny in Saint Cloud in 83. International Falls reports sunny skies in 79. And in the Twin Cities, sunshine, at temperature of 85 degrees. That's a look at the latest news. I'm Greta Cunningham.

RACHEL REABE: Welcome back to this Mainstreet special on black bears. We're broadcasting live from the International Wolf Center in Ely. I'm Rachel Reabe. My guests are Bill Lea, president of the American Bear Association, Dave Garshelis, bear project leader for the Department of Natural Resources, and bear researcher and wildlife biologist Lynn Rogers. Our phone lines are open for your questions and comments. You can call us at 1-800-537-5252. 1-800-537-5252.

And we go right away back to the phones. Marge is in Ely. She's on the telephone. Good afternoon, Marge. Welcome to Mainstreet.

MARGE: Yes, good afternoon. My husband and I built a home last year on 40 acres south of Ely. And because of our own stupidity, we had our first encounter with a beautiful black bear. He was caught one night in my sunflower barrel on my porch. And needless to say, my husband, standing in his underwear, yelling at him to get off his porch, did not deter him. And by his second visit, my wiener dog's barking didn't deter him either.

But by his third visit, the rifle that my husband shot in the air did chase him away. And we don't want him here. But it's just so exciting and so awesome to see him out there and see him that close.

RACHEL REABE: Thank you, Marge, for your call. We go to Eagan. Bill is on the phone. Good afternoon, Bill. Welcome to Mainstreet.

BILL: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for taking my call. I've been a bull hunter for 25 years. And I don't [INAUDIBLE] management. I don't believe in standing in a type of hunting. But I do have a problem with baiting. I guess I would feel a lot more comfortable hunting a bear if I had to hunt the bear on his own terms. I realize that they have a large home range, and they would be very difficult to hunt in that manner. But I think--

RACHEL REABE: OK, Bill is on his cell phone having problems, obviously, with the reception. His point is he doesn't mind hunting. He doesn't like baiting bears. He thinks, as he said, kill them fair and square. I would be interested. We've already talked about the DNR's position on that, that that's been tradition in Minnesota, and it's what we go with. Lynn Rogers, do you have a thought about hunting bears, how we should go about it?

LYNN ROGERS: Boy, like Bill Lea here, the North American Bear Center doesn't have a position on hunting or any controversial issues. We just want to educate the public about the natural history of these animals and present both sides of any controversial issue.

RACHEL REABE: And there's no plan underway or no proposal to stop allowing baiting of bears? It seems to be working, Dave.

DAVE GARSHELIS: Well, I think so. I mean, since the basic problem that we have right now is a bear population that's increasing out of control, if we did stop baiting and made hunting much more difficult, it really does exacerbate that problem.

RACHEL REABE: We go now to Inver Grove Heights. Good afternoon, Paul. Welcome to Mainstreet.

PAUL: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. OK, I have three questions. What do mother bears do when you attack its cubs? How big do black bears get? And do bears live close together or very spread out?

RACHEL REABE: Paul, great questions. Let's have our guests address those. First of all, what do mother bears do when you attack a cub? Lynn, you talked about taking the cub away. What did that mother bear do, just wave goodbye?

LYNN ROGERS: No, they made a big fuss and said a lot of things and looked real ferocious. But we learned that is not really a threat and not really a danger. What I expected to see when I grabbed a cub was the mother to come charging. But about 20 feet away was the typical distance. They kind of chicken out and retreat. And they might do the same thing again. But we just came to accept that, yeah, we're going to see the mother charge. We're not going to see any contact.

One thing I would not do, though, and that is climb a tree. Because bears have always been the largest tree climber in North America. They've always been the master of the treetops. And when--

RACHEL REABE: So you could never outclimb a bear?

LYNN ROGERS: That's right. And when an invading bear climbs a tree to get away from a ferocious mother, sometimes the mother comes up, grabs it by the hind leg and tries to throw it out. And I know of six people that have climbed trees panicked when they saw a mother with cubs, didn't realize they didn't have to run. And the bear did come up, did try to bite their foot. And one guy did get thrown out of a tree. Not all in Minnesota but--

RACHEL REABE: Some of those happened in Ely, though. That was well-publicized, that guy climbing a tree and the bear going after him, was it not, a number of years ago?

LYNN ROGERS: I-- you mean Ken Berger, a couple of years ago, that got bit by a bear?

RACHEL REABE: Mm-hmm.

LYNN ROGERS: That was a different situation.

RACHEL REABE: OK, so don't climb a tree.

LYNN ROGERS: Right.

DAVE GARSHELIS: Can I just correct something here? Lynn did make the comment about mother and cubs not attacking people and resulting in a fatal interaction. But there are a number of instances where a mother and cubs, where somebody did something stupid, like pick up a cub, and they were attacked by a bear, and they were mauled by the bear. And it results in various degrees of injuries. And it's one thing to give statistics about just fatal attacks. It's another thing to talk about attacks, period.

And there are a number of black bears attacks, 25 or so every year across the country. And some of these are very just minor scratches, but some are maulings where people are disfigured or they're severely hampered or something like that. And I think people really should know about those. I mean, that is something to consider.

RACHEL REABE: So stay away from a mother bear and her cubs.

DAVE GARSHELIS: It's not a good idea, just because a researcher can do it. And I think Lynn has some better judgment about how to read bears and what to do. I don't think that we should be telling the public--

RACHEL REABE: Don't do this at home.

DAVE GARSHELIS: Exactly.

RACHEL REABE: Let's move on to the second part of this question, which is, how big do bears get? What is the record black bear we've ever seen in Minnesota?

LYNN ROGERS: I would say that's a bear that I weighed at Bill Lea's sanctuary.

RACHEL REABE: And how big was the bear?

LYNN ROGERS: That was Duffy at 876 pounds.

RACHEL REABE: 876 pounds? The average black bear is how big? What would you say?

LYNN ROGERS: Dave Garshelis would know the best.

DAVE GARSHELIS: The average male bear is going to be down around 350 pounds or something in Minnesota. And there have been actually a few bigger bears elsewhere in North America, black bears. There was one recently in North Carolina that was 880 pounds.

RACHEL REABE: Bill Lea, what are you doing to them down there in the Carolinas? OK, and the last part of the question, how close do black bears live together? How wide is their territory? We talk about wolf packs. Do bears live very solitary lives? Or do they live in groups as well?

DAVE GARSHELIS: Well, they live solitary lives, but they get packed in by how many there are. It's a density type of an issue. And in Minnesota, it averages about one bear per square mile. But in other places, in national parks and other places that aren't hunted, you can get three or four bears per square mile.

RACHEL REABE: We have a member of our audience who has a question. Leif Enger?

LEIF ENGER: Kathy Sherrod is here. And of course, the whole premise of this hour is that there are tons and tons of bears. And Kathy has a question about that baseline data.

KATHY SHERROD: I'd like to know how you find out that the population is doubling and doubling and doubling? I'm sure they don't answer a census, the bears, that is. So how do you base your figures?

RACHEL REABE: Good question. Dave Garshelis?

DAVE GARSHELIS: It is. And unfortunately, it's a rather complicated answer. We use a technique called a mark recapture, where we mark a certain proportion of the population or a certain number of animals. And for example, we mark 1,000 bears. And then we get what's called a recapture sample and find out what proportion that 1,000 represents. And so in the recapture sample, we find out that 1 out of 10 bears are marked, then we know we have 10,000 bears.

And the way we did it was we marked bears by putting out baits with little capsules of tetracycline in the baits. The bears came and ate these baits by ingesting the tetracycline. They got a mark in their bones and in their teeth. And then hunters turned in a sample to us of their bone-- of a bone or a tooth from a killed bear. And we looked at what proportion of those had tetracycline.

RACHEL REABE: So that's your best guess, estimate using those methods?

DAVE GARSHELIS: It is. And it's not really a guess. It really is a pretty accurate estimate of the entire statewide population.

RACHEL REABE: Tom is on the phone from Rochester. Good afternoon, Tom. Welcome to Mainstreet.

TOM: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I had a question about black bear attacks on humans and the motivation behind them. And recently, I was reading a book by Stephen Herrero, who is apparently some sort of animal behaviorist or environmental biologist. And it was his proposition, in looking through the information that was available to him, that most of the severe black bear attacks on humans were motivated by predation, in that they were preying on humans. And I wonder if you could just comment on that, if that's been your experience. I'll take my response offline. Thanks.

LYNN ROGERS: Yes, that's true. And that gets back to what Dave was saying, too, earlier about these attacks. We have to separate predacious offensive attacks from defensive attacks. Dave mentioned that some of these so-called attacks across the country are just scratches. That's when somebody tries to pet a bear and a bear doesn't understand petting because they're solitary animals. They don't do mutual grooming like many species do. And when somebody reaches out to pet a bear, the bear doesn't understand that. And they'll nip or cuff.

And another way that people get attacked, so-called attack, is by trying to handfeed a bear, which I would never recommend. Because so many people that keep jerking the bear-- the food back, as soon as the bear opens his mouth to get it, pretty soon the bear tries to take it quickly and gets a finger, bruises the finger. Not a big injury, but a person reported as, oh, I got bit by a bear. And so--

RACHEL REABE: What percent would be unprovoked attacks then, just actual attacks from bears? Any idea?

LYNN ROGERS: These are-- what's that?

RACHEL REABE: Any idea what percentage would be unprovoked attacks? I think that's what the question was.

LYNN ROGERS: The good thing about these unprovoked attacks is how rare they are. It's easy to prevent the defensive attacks by bears because we just don't have to handfeed them and to go close to them. The offensive attacks, the good thing is that they're very rare.

RACHEL REABE: Very rare.

LYNN ROGERS: Yes. Like, the killings is 40 so far this century. And attacks, they're very rare, probably a few per year. We had one here in Minnesota in 1987 and--

RACHEL REABE: 12 years ago.

LYNN ROGERS: Yeah. Right.

RACHEL REABE: OK, we go to Gail in Minneapolis. Good afternoon, Gail. Welcome to Mainstreet.

GAIL: Hello. Thank you. I'm wondering-- I heard one of the gentlemen mention about taking the cubs for research. And I'm wondering if there's a specific program where they take so many cubs a year. And where do they bring them? And what kind of research do they do on them? Thank you.

LYNN ROGERS: Oh, that is simply to ear-tag the cubs, so as they grow up, we know the approximate area that they were born in, who the brothers and sisters are, who the mother is. So we can learn how bears live together and the effects of kinship on their behavior among each other.

RACHEL REABE: Can you tag a cub, and it can go right back to its mother?

LYNN ROGERS: Oh, yes. Right there, yes. And people worry sometimes about what if there's human smell on the bear-- on the cub. Would the mother accept it? And that only comes with animals that live in groups, like sheep or something, where they distinguish each other by smell. But for black bears, any cub that's out there, the mother wants.

RACHEL REABE: We go to Saint Paul now where Earl is standing by. Good afternoon, Earl. Welcome to Mainstreet.

EARL FLECK: Hi, Rachel. This is Earl Fleck. I'm the author of a book called "Chasing Bears: A Canoe Country Adventure." It's a novel for youth that you may find on sale right here in Ely. But I wanted to ask one question of the gentlemen. I was coming home from my up north book tour, where I was promoting my book in June. And I came across a bear, a young bear that had been killed along the roadside. Must have been a-year-and-a-half-old or two-year-old bear. I'm wondering, are we seeing more bear vehicle problems with this increased population?

RACHEL REABE: Good question. That's one actually one of our reporters did have an incident with. But he said he didn't hit the bear. The bear hit him. Does that happen? Are we seeing these bear vehicle crashes?

DAVE GARSHELIS: You know, actually, we once thought that we could use the number of bear vehicle collisions as an index to the population size. And we have pretty good records on these. And it actually shows no trend. We have about 50 or so bears killed every year that we're aware of in vehicle collisions. And that has stayed the same for the past 15 or so years.

RACHEL REABE: Which is amazing, considering the number of bears have grown, the number of people have grown, the number of cars have grown.

DAVE GARSHELIS: Right.

RACHEL REABE: So they're pretty wary of cars. Let's go to Duluth. We have Irene on the phone. Good afternoon, Irene. Welcome to Mainstreet.

IRENE: Good afternoon. The Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary is an outstanding educational center. Ely has the Wolf Center. Why not let Orr have the bear center at the Shute Sanctuary? Bears range up to 100 miles, so the Boundary Waters Canoe Area doesn't really play into this.

RACHEL REABE: Bill, is that something that you're gunning for, to establish a bear center in Orr?

BILL LEA: I wouldn't say that we're gunning for that. I guess I wouldn't mind seeing a bear center in every county where we have bears so people could learn more about this animal. And we've heard a lot of different thoughts. We talked about attacks, going from grabbing cubs to being petrified. A lot of people are just so afraid of bears. And I think what we need to do is we need to show that bears are not Teddy bears, but we don't also have to be so afraid of them.

And what we want to do is replace fear with respect. And I think the bears will benefit by more and more education. So if we have more education centers teaching about bears, I think the bears become the ultimate winner.

RACHEL REABE: So someplace in the middle.

LYNN ROGERS: I agree completely with Bill. And if we do get a bear center here in Ely, Bill Lea is the guy that we want to work with to send field trips to and work in cooperation with the Orr, the Vince Shute Sanctuary.

RACHEL REABE: Does the DNR have anything to say about the bear side up in Orr, that they're feeding 50 bears? Is the DNR neutral on that, Dave, or are they supporting it or opposed to it? Do you have any idea what the position would be of your agency?

DAVE GARSHELIS: Well, the position of the agency is that we don't encourage anybody to feed bears. And I guess that position is somewhat in conflict with the Vince Shute Sanctuary, them feeding bears. And also, I might add, what Lynn Rogers has sometimes preached, that feeding bears is OK and that people could do that, even though--

LYNN ROGERS: Let me speak for myself on that, if you please.

DAVE GARSHELIS: OK, you can afterwards, Lynn. But basically, we are opposed to feeding bears. Now, we understand what the history is of the Vince Shute Sanctuary, and we understand that there are some benefits to having people come see bears and to use that as a kind of a magnet to bring people in and to give them a message. But it is, I think, sometimes a little bit difficult for people to see, in operation, feeding bears and at the same time being told, don't do this.

BILL LEA: I think that is our greatest challenge, is to make sure that people don't leave there thinking that it's a good idea to feed bears. And there's no doubt in all of our minds at the American Bear Association that that's a negative aspect of what we're doing there. And if somebody is against the feeding, we certainly understand that. But everything you do in life has positives and negatives, and the feeding is a negative.

But if we can use those bears there as ambassadors for bears everywhere, if we can teach a respect for bears, if we can talk about the habitat needs, then we feel that maybe in this case, with the long history of feeding, that's taken place there, may be in this case, it's OK. But we need to-- and we do every day, every hour, we give a talk. And we tell our visitors that it is not a good thing, and nobody should ever start it.

RACHEL REABE: What if you stopped feeding bears today up there? Are you afraid that those bears would not be able to manage for themselves in the wild?

BILL LEA: No, definitely not. This is just supplemental food.

RACHEL REABE: It's just dessert?

BILL LEA: Right. And what we find is in those years, like when we have a drought and there's less food available, we have more visitation. So it really varies. And we feel really good that none of those bears are dependent upon it because none of the bears are there long enough. It's switches, and they come and go as they want.

RACHEL REABE: So it's a fluid transient population. Lynn Rogers, let's give you a chance to give your opinion on feeding bears.

LYNN ROGERS: I agree with Bill. Bill said it very well, that they're not dependent on the place, that they supplement their food there. And if you look at the droppings there, you see it's primarily wild food. They come there for dessert. And in years when natural food is scarce, it gives them a place to go instead of somebody's garbage can.

RACHEL REABE: For doing your research, and again, you've been in bear research for three decades, is food-- does that have to be the bait to bring-- do you to have something to bring the bears in?

LYNN ROGERS: Yes, if they weren't feeding there, they wouldn't see the bears. The bears, if they stopped feeding soon, the bears would be somewhere else, and nobody get to see them. And this educational opportunity that Bill is offering at the Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary would be lost.

RACHEL REABE: You have lived very closely with the bears and have strong opinions that they not only look sort of human with five fingers and five toes, that they actually have emotions like humans. Tell us about that.

LYNN ROGERS: Well, that's a question that nobody can really answer. People are often asking me, bears look so human. They act so human. They're so intelligent. Do they share some of our emotions? And the more we learn about animals, the more emotions we learn about that they share. But it's hard to see into the mind of an animal, to see what its real emotions are.

I was struck, though, when a mother had two of her cubs and one was missing. For two days, one cub was missing. And for that two days, I recorded her sound, and it sounded-- everybody I played to this says, that bear is crying. It sounded like-- [MIMICS BEAR MOANING] And for two days, she made that sound, even when she'd be nursing her cubs, have all the stimulation from her cubs. She knew that that one was missing. Until it was reunited with her, and she stopped, and we never heard that sound before or since.

RACHEL REABE: So that would lead you to believe that there are emotions there.

LYNN ROGERS: That she was feeling some strong feelings. Yes, absolutely.

RACHEL REABE: Let's talk a little bit about bear sounds. We heard that great sound that Leif got up there of the bear crunching on his peanuts. What else can you tell us, that if we would see a bear in the wild, that we would know something about what they're about to do by the sounds that they make? Do they have kind of an attack sound or kind of a friendly, I don't mind if you're here kind of sound?

LYNN ROGERS: Yes. In fact, bears make a lot of sounds. And part of my research was to get to know individuals well enough that they would accept me, and I could walk with them and sleep with them for 24 hours at a time, mothers and cubs and everything. And I got to hear the vocalizations among themselves that you wouldn't normally hear. Because most of the things that campers and hikers hear are what they interpret as ferocious sounds. In fact, they usually interpret anything a bear says as a growl. And I've never heard a bear growl.

BILL LEA: I would like to say one thing as far as vocalizations and emotions. One thing that I think people really find surprising is how much fear dominates the life of a bear, which is very surprising to most people because you have this great big, huge, powerful animal.

RACHEL REABE: With some very sharp claws.

BILL LEA: Right? And some big canines. But they are dominated by fear. Out at the sanctuary, we live with these bears. And we don't know about emotions, but we do know that there are a lot of different personalities. They just each is an individual. But almost the one common trait that we see is that fear dominates their life. They're afraid of each other. They're jumpy. They're afraid of humans in certain circumstances. And it's just very surprising that you have this huge, powerful animal that is afraid. And a lot of people just don't realize that.

RACHEL REABE: Len is on the line from Dakota County. Good afternoon, Len. Welcome to Mainstreet.

LEN: I had a question for Lynn Rogers. He's often said, and I've taped things when he's been on television, that bears make bluff charges. I'd like to know how does someone, a layman, distinguish a bluff charge from a real charge, if you should encounter a bear way up north?

RACHEL REABE: That would be some good information for all of us, Lynn. What's the real thing?

LYNN ROGERS: It just looks blustery. A bluff charge looks blustery. Like these charges that the mothers made when I grabbed their cubs, they come forward blowing explosively, putting out air, slamming their front feet down extra hard with each thing. It makes the ground shake. And they like to actually run through bushes or lunge against bushes because that emphasizes the whole display.

BILL LEA: And you know it's a bluff if they stop.

[LAUGHTER]

LYNN ROGERS: That's how you know.

RACHEL REABE: If you're still around to see it, you'll know if it was a bluff or not.

LYNN ROGERS: I did get into one situation where it was not a bluff charge. There was no bluster to this. I startled this mother's cubs. She whirled around and came at me silently. No bluster, straight for me, mouth open. I tried to run backwards. I took one step, and I fell on my back. And as I fell, I hit her in the head with my camera, and I landed on my back. I kicked her in the chin. She never flinched, and she never touched me. As I lay there waiting to see what to do next, she stood over me and then just turned and went back to the cubs.

RACHEL REABE: So what do we draw from that, Lynn Rogers?

LYNN ROGERS: That when I-- that if a bear is-- I thought if I was just oozing fear, I smelled like fear. And a lot of people are afraid that if they looked vulnerable-- here, I was laying on my back. And if your smell is afraid, and an animal can tell that you're afraid, that they're going to attack. And she didn't.

RACHEL REABE: Well, who wouldn't smell afraid if you've fallen down and the bear is over you? How can you pretend not to be afraid when you're scared?

LYNN ROGERS: So when I got up, I felt-- I mean, I thought, if she's not going to attack when she's angry, I'm vulnerable, I smell like I'm afraid, I don't have to worry at all. And I went with her for another two hours until they lay down and take a nap.

RACHEL REABE: So if you see a bear and you-- should you turn and run? Should you stand your ground? Should you be small? Should you be big?

LYNN ROGERS: I've experimented with that, actually. And--

RACHEL REABE: Tell us in 15 seconds what we should do.

LYNN ROGERS: OK. It really doesn't make a big difference. I've heard all the things about never run from a bear. You got to stand and look big. You got to talk a certain way. And when these mothers were charging, I got so confident that nothing would happen. I experimented with looking small, looking away, running, and it never made any difference.

RACHEL REABE: We are out of time. Dave Garshelis, Bill Lea, and Lynn Rogers, thanks for being with us today. The special Mainstreet Radio broadcast is a production of Minnesota Public Radio. Our engineers are Cliff Bentley and Rob Hazinski in Ely, Randy Johnson in Saint Paul. Our producer is Sarah Meyer. Site producer, Leif Enger. Our executive producer is Mel Sommer. We'd like to thank Tim Cook and the staff at the International Wolf Center for making this broadcast from Ely possible.

We invite you to visit the Mainstreet website. Go to mpr.org. MPR'a Mainstreet Radio coverage of rural issues is supported by the Blandin Foundation, committed to strengthening communities through grant-making, leadership training, and convening. Minnesota Public Radio's Mainstreet team consists of 12 reporters at MPR bureaus across Minnesota. I'm Rachel Reabe.