Teamwork makes the dream work, even in the bear community.
A couple of months ago, a family of black bears living in Massachusetts made short work of a family’s backyard bird feeder. Joanna Marra, the Hubbardston homeowner, had security cameras set up that captured the entire sequence of events.
The Massachusetts resident had actually been keeping an eye on the family of bears for a while before this incident. They had shown up in her backyard multiple times in the previous year, though this was the first time the family of bruins decided to take down her bird feeder.
Despite the fact that her bird feeder was knocked out of commission, Marra told CBS News Boston that she actually loves to see the black bears in her yard:
“I just saw the momma bear come through my yard with her three cubs. We were just staring through the (upstairs) window. I mean, I love wildlife. I love living out here.”
That’s obviously great for Joanna Marra, but not everyone else in the community feels the same way about black bears wandering around their homes. Massachusetts Wildlife bear expert Dave Wattles spoke on the growing concern of bear activity in the area, and tied it all back to residents leaving food outside their homes.
Whether it be in a bird feeder, or just unsecured garbage, Wattles says that those types of things are bear magnets, and can’t be left out if a community wishes to limit their interactions with bears. He went on to state that the increase in sightings is likely a combination of different factors:
“Our bear population is growing, and growing rather rapidly. So we do have an increasing number of bears, so there is greater interactions with the public as well.
We’re getting a lot of reports of wildlife and people catching rare things with wildlife (on video) that was happening all the time, but now it’s on camera and on video.”
There’s a chance that the increased amount of security cameras around homes is leading to the increase of bear sightings. You obviously want everyone out in bear country to be safe, but in my opinion, it’s always fun to see a video like this of bears that are up to no good every once in a while:
