The Bear Necessities

A century ago, black bears in North Carolina were on the brink. Today, they’re thriving in mountains, coastal swamps, and even neighborhoods.

In this episode, we sit down with Colleen Olfenbuttel, TWS member, longtime bear biologist and the NCWRC game mammals and survey unit supervisor, to unpack how science-based management helped the once-rare species rebound. They also talk about how wildlife managers are tackling coexistence in a quickly urbanizing state. 

Colleen takes us inside the state’s pivotal moves in the 1970s—mandatory harvest reporting, protections for females and cubs, and the creation of bear management areas that seeded recovery across the landscape. We dig into human-bear conflict, why unsecured attractants and intentional feeding sit at the root, and how BearWise communities, feeding bans, and bear-resistant trash cans cut problems at the source.

Colleen shares practical safety advice for black bear encounters, explains why relocating “problem bears” fails, and demystifies dens and hibernation.

Learn more: 

About Colleen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colleen-olfenbuttel/

North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission: https://www.ncwildlife.gov/

BearWise: https://bearwise.org/

Bear cub rehabilitation program: https://www.ncwildlife.gov/wildlife-habitat/species/black-bear/what-happens-orphaned-black-bear-cubs-north-carolina

Become a Certified Wildlife Biologist - https://wildlife.org/certification-programs/

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:02 The Black Bear Comeback Story
• 3:39 Colleen’s Path Into Bear Science
• 6:55 Urban Bears And The Asheville Study
• 8:22 How Bears Weathered Hurricane Helene
• 11:31 Inside North Carolina’s Cub Rehab
• 15:06 Science-Based Management
• 18:02 Defining Real “Problem Bears”
• 20:40 Feeding Bans And BearWise Communities
• 24:36 Why Relocating Bears Fails
• 26:14 Field Stories From Alaska And Appalachia
• 30:13 What To Do If You See A Bear
• 34:10 Dens, Hibernation, And Hidden Physiology
• 37:43 [Ad] Nature Disturbed
• 38:33 (Cont.) Dens, Hibernation, And Hidden Physiology
• 39:10 Winter Bears And Human Food
• 41:54 The Future And Closing

Transcript

[00:00:00] Katie Perkins: If you've got a black bear question, odds are today's guest, Colleen Olfenbuttel can answer it. 

Colleen is the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission game mammals and survey supervisor, and she was previously the state's black bear and fur bearer biologists for 17 years. 

So if you wanted to know, are bears causing crop circles, how do we manage human bear interactions? What happens to orphan bear cubs in North Carolina? Why are some black bears brown? What do I do if I see a bear in the wild? How do they fit in such small spaces? How does hibernation really work, and more than keep on listening. 

I'm your host, Katie Perkins. Welcome to the Our Wild Lives Podcast, brought to you by The Wildlife Society.

*Intro Music*

What's the story of black bears in North Carolina specifically? 

[00:00:46] Colleen Olfenbuttel: Oh, gosh. It's, it's such a great story. and I, I always preface the story of bears in North Carolina with the fact that they are a wildlife success story. It's a good news story. so black bears, like a lot of other wildlife species were almost extripated from North Carolina and really North America.

Just, you know, unregulated killing. We didn't have state wildlife agencies to regulate take. Um, we had a huge change in the landscape of North America with clear cutting and conversion of forest for agriculture, so lots of habitat loss. And so all that combined almost caused the extripation of black bears in North Carolina.

By the seventies, we estimate, we definitely had about less than a thousand bears in North Carolina, and they were in really isolated populations in the mountains and then in the coast. And so in the seventies, our first bear biologist, John Collins, recognized we needed to do something to reverse the declining trend with black bears. Beause at one point, black bears were proposed to be listed as a state threatened species. 

That's how bad it got. So John Collins and the agency in cooperation actually with bear hunters, made several changes to try to reverse that trend and they were successful. So one, we had regulations such as if you harvest a bear you have to report it.

You know, that seems like a common sense approach now, but that was pretty groundbreaking back in the seventies. You know, there were other regulations to try to protect females, protect cubs. We set aside what was considered good bear habitat. We closed it off to bear hunting and we called them quote unquote sanctuaries.

Uh, those sanctuaries still exist now. We call them designated bear management areas, and those areas kind of served as a source population where the bears were protected. The females reproduced. And then as that population grew, it repopulated the adjacent area. And that proved to be a very successful strategy.

We also did research. There had been no research on bears prior to the seventies. We didn't know when do they have cubs, when do they breed, what do they eat? We didn't know any of that. So alot of research, regulations, our designated bear management areas, all that combined. We started to see a reversal in the bear population decline, to where now we have over 20,000 bears in North Carolina and we considered them fully restored to the state.

[00:03:19] Katie Perkins: Colleen, tell me a little bit about your background, where you went to school and how you got started in bear biology. 

[00:03:25] Colleen Olfenbuttel: So I went to undergraduate at Ohio University, go Bobcats. I actually was gonna major in engineering and then for various reasons, quickly realized, Nope, not, that's not for me and discovered the wildlife biology major and realized, wow, you can study wildlife? I didn't know that. I just thought of careers in wildlife as zookeepers or park rangers.

So I switched to wildlife biology, and so I graduated from there. I took a few years off to get experience. so I traveled the country going from job to job in the wildlife field, and then went to grad school at Virginia Tech, where I got my master's in w ildlife management, and it was at Virginia Tech where I really learned about my passion for black bears.

When you're going into wildlife. It can be overwhelming, you know, what do you wanna do in wildlife? What species, what taxa, um, and I was going through that as well. But I had quickly decided I wanted to deal with mammals, preferably large mammals or mid-size mammals. I was put in charge of a bear study that was going on in Western Virginia, within the first few months of being on that project, I realized, oh yeah.

 Black bears are fascinating and if I can make a career out of this, that that's where I wanna be. And so I studied black bears at Virginia Tech and then, when I defended my masters, I actually had a job already. And that was to become the fur bear biologist for Mass Wildlife, the state agency in Massachusetts.

 I'd interviewed and I had gotten a job offer just before my defense. And it was also within what I wanted to do, fur bearers, which are your, your mid-size mammals. And so I worked in Massachusetts for a couple years. The fur bearer position came open in North Carolina and for various reasons I wanted to move to North Carolina, though I did love working in Massachusetts.

Became the fur bear biologist in North Carolina and within just a few months, our bear biologists had taken another job in the agency. And they came to me and said, you know, could you add bears to your responsibilities? 'cause we really could use this position for something else. And I said, yes. It was an enthusiastic yes.

'Because I mean, I love my fur bearers, uh, but I also really enjoy working with black bears. So that was back in 2007. So really, I've been involved with bear research and bear management for almost 25 years.

[00:05:52] Katie Perkins: Wow. Do you remember the first time you ever saw a Black Bear?

[00:05:56] Colleen Olfenbuttel: Uh, the first time I saw a black bear was in Virginia. and it happened to be the one I caught the first black bear I ever captured. I actually still have a picture of myself with that black bear 'cause it was such an amazing experience. So that was the very first bear I saw was the one I got to catch.

And I tell everybody this, colleagues, the public friends, family. That every bear I see in the wild still, I get really excited about. It's just every time I see a bear in the wild, it's just a fun, unique, cool experience. It's just so interesting to watch a black bear as it navigates in the wild.

[00:06:35] Katie Perkins: Yeah. So what does the management look like now? Is it still very hands-on or has the state kind of taken a step back and just kind of let them self sustain themselves?

[00:06:45] Colleen Olfenbuttel: Well, I will say, uh, it's kind of a mix of both and you know, one key thing that bears are good at is adapting to our landscape. And so because of that adaptability, they aren't reliant on a certain habitat. They can almost live anywhere. As long as there's a place to eat, a place to provide shelter, and a place they can find a den at to have their young.

That means we now have bears that have adapted to live in a very developed and urban environments. I don't know how many people are familiar with the city of Asheville. 

It's a big tourist mecca. But we actually conducted an urban bear study there because yeah, we've been doing research since the seventies, but all that research had been to answer knowledge gaps on what I call the, the country bears, the rural bears.

[00:07:37] Katie Perkins: Yeah.

[00:07:38] Colleen Olfenbuttel: And we realized we actually have bears living in a very urban environment and we have a lot of questions about their life history and what they do and how they navigate. So I'd say more management has evolved to where we're now focusing on these black bear populations that are more developed areas.

[00:07:58] Katie Perkins: How different is life for a country bear versus an urban bear?

[00:08:02] Colleen Olfenbuttel: Well, so there's a lot of similarities and differences. There are similarities in what they eat, you know, natural foods, your acorns, your berries, your forbes, your insects. But an urban bear has a larger smorgasbord. So say the natural food supplies are limiting.

You have a bad acorn year. For an urban bear, that doesn't matter because guess what? 

There's bird feeders and garbage. 

So we just see that the food supplies in a more developed area are not only more abundant, but they're year round. And so what we discovered on this urban bear study is that our urban bears are heavier and that the females reproduce at a younger age and they have larger litters, so reproduction is very high. 

Again, this study took place in Asheville and we are getting more people in Asheville saying, boy, it seems like there's a lot of bears. And we're like, there are, you guys are literally growing more bears. And that area, that city of Asheville, they're, they are a source population for the surrounding area despite being such a developed environment, 'cause again, the bears have adapted.

[00:09:11] Katie Perkins: That is fascinating. Is there any information on how the bear population has been impacted by Helene?

[00:09:18] Colleen Olfenbuttel: So within 12 hours of Helene hitting western North Carolina. I got my first email asking, how are the bears doing? 

Which to be honest, at that time, a lot of us were more concerned about how the people were doing. basically Helene had no impact on black bears.

Certainly Helene had devastating impacts on a lot of other wildlife species. In particular wildlife that's dependent on the aquatic environment, so, such as our hellbender population, certain fish species. 

But for bears, again, bears are adaptable.

We actually had some rehabilitated bear cubs that we had just released in western North Carolina about a week before Helene hit.

And they had, we, we monitored their movements and those bear cubs even so they had just been rehabbed, just been released on a landscape they'd never been to before. 

They did what bears do, they adapted by just hunkering down. So they just hunkered down during the storm and then once the storm passed, they went back to moving across the landscape.

[00:10:24] Katie Perkins: That's amazing how resilient they can be and, and just, you know, kind of fortify themselves and like you said, be so, so adaptable.

[00:10:33] Colleen Olfenbuttel: Yeah. We do suspect that, you know, some of the bears probably where there were flooding and rising waters. Again, it's a bear they can easily move. I mean, bears are known for having large home ranges, being able to travel miles in a day. And so we suspect if a bear was typically in a low lying area that started to flood, just moved to higher elevation and again, rode out the storm.

[00:10:56] Katie Perkins: I've always wondered that... how wildlife is impacted in these big, natural, disasters. But it's cool to think about like bears are like 'hurricane don't care,'

You know, like, I'm just gonna keep going on with my day. Yeah. So, cool. 

Tell me a little bit more about this cub rehab program. 

[00:11:12] Colleen Olfenbuttel: We've been rehabilitating bear cubs in North Carolina since 1976. And I have yet to find evidence that any state started rehabbing cubs before we did. So I always like to say we were the first state to start the program, um, and I challenge any other state to tell me otherwise. But we first started, because again, we hardly had any bears back then, so every bear mattered.

And so we decided we would take these, uh, orphan cubs, rehabilitate them, and then put them back in the wild to basically help boost the population. Now, as I said, bears have been fully restored, but we continue the rehab program and the reason why is our purpose has changed. 

Now we do it because we wanna make sure that these cubs are rehabbed in a way that assures their best chance of survival in the wild as well as the best chance that upon release, they're not gonna cause a conflict 'cause they become habituated.

So that's why we continue to do it. I would also say, you know, the public expects us to do it. You know, when people see cubs . They right away gravitate to them. 

Of course. 

You know, and 

[00:12:25] Katie Perkins: It's hard not to! 

[00:12:26] Colleen Olfenbuttel: Yeah. I mean, no, they are adorable. I'll be the first to say that. And so, because of the strong connection the public has with bears, in particular bear cubs, the public expects that if there's an orphan bear cub that we're gonna do something about it. 

And so we continue to do that program. We continue to monitor all aspects of that program to try to identify improvements we can make. And that's why we continue to not only ear tag the cubs, but we put GPS tracking collars on them so we can learn more about what happens upon release.

[00:12:58] Katie Perkins: Is there any interesting, data that you found from using these GPS collars?

Like I imagine you get so much information. Is there anything that kind of stuck out to you as like, wow, I, you know, we didn't know that before.

[00:13:09] Colleen Olfenbuttel: Yeah. So, before about 2016, we didn't know what happened to these cubs. But in 2016, uh, vectronics which is a GPS collar company, they came out with a tracking collar that was light enough to finally put on rehabilitated bears. 

At that time we were actually overwintering our cubs.

We'd get them. We'd over winter them in a facility and then we'd release 'em the following spring and we'd release them at the time of year when they're, again, natural foods, your spring foods, as well as kind of the natural time of normal family breakup, you know, where they're now yearlings and they'd be leaving mama 

bear.

So that's what we used to do. We got these tracking collars that were light enough, we put 'em on the bears and lots of people had lots of questions. I'll put it that way. My question is, yeah, what happens to these cubs, now yearlings when we release 'em? Do they survive? Where do they go? Other people had questions, and those questions were, 

I think every bear you release becomes a problem bear .

[00:14:18] Katie Perkins: yeah. 

[00:14:19] Colleen Olfenbuttel: so 

[00:14:19] Katie Perkins: It's understandable why they would kind of jump to that conclusion.

[00:14:22] Colleen Olfenbuttel: Right? Yeah. So we put the tracking collars on. We worked with, uh, University of North Carolina, Wilmington, Dr. Rachel Urbanek, to do the study. And I would say no one expected the results we found. 

And one of the results was we didn't have these bears turning to problem bears.

They didn't. So that was good news, we weren't creating problem bears once they were upon release. And we also learned that, if they did suffer mortality, it was through the regulated hunting season, so it was a legal harvest.

[00:14:53] Katie Perkins: Mm-hmm. 

[00:14:54] Colleen Olfenbuttel: However, you know, survivorship wasn't as high as we wanted. About, I think within the first year after release survivorship was about 50%. And you know, we're greedy. What can we do to improve that? And so in 2020, everybody knows what happened in 2020, right? The pandemic.

[00:15:14] Katie Perkins: Yep. 

[00:15:14] Colleen Olfenbuttel: I don't know if this was related, but we had 20 orphan bear cubs that year.

[00:15:19] Katie Perkins: Oh my goodness. 

[00:15:20] Colleen Olfenbuttel: It was our highest number and it really prompted us to like really examine how we wanted to do bear cub rehab because we couldn't overwinter that many cubs.

Mm-hmm. 

So there had been some researchers that had suspected that the less time a bear cub is in human care, survivorship actually increases. 

So that year I decided let's release these cubs at eight to nine months old in September. We have tons of acorns on the ground, fall mass. Let's release 'em and see what happens.

Again. Vectronics produced a collar for us that was light enough to put on a cub as long as it was 50 pounds or more and we've been doing that since 2020. And I was shocked by the results because all the bears that we tracked with the tracking collar from time of release until the following spring and April, 100% survivorship.

[00:16:17] Katie Perkins: That's amazing.

[00:16:18] Colleen Olfenbuttel: I mean, these are cubs that they get orphaned, they come into the rehab center, then they get released. They've never, you know, they've never been in the spot. We put them and you know, they hadn't been with mom maybe long enough to learn all the different foods to eat. But it shows how resilient bears are, including cubs. They figure it out. They know what they're doing. So since 2020, we now release all our cubs in September.

[00:16:43] Katie Perkins: Yeah, I think that's also such an important case of like letting science dictate management decisions, because I don't think people really realize how important that is to wildlife management. All of these decisions, they have science behind them. You said, you saw other research that influenced your decision making behind that. And then it just, I mean, that data, you can't beat that.

[00:17:06] Colleen Olfenbuttel: You can't. And you know, again, we continue to put tracking collars on these cubs to continue to learn to see are there improvements to the process? What do they do? As well as we get a lot of questions from the public about what happens to orphan bear cubs. 

Because again, they have a high interest and we can provide that information.

And what's fascinating to me is you never know what questions you are able to answer. And the most recent one was. How do bears handle Helene? Oh, well we happen to have bears with tracking collars and we can answer that question. 

[00:17:39] Katie Perkins: Yeah. Amazing. Let's talk about problem bears.

Oh, so your habituated cubs are not becoming problem bears, but there are problem bears. So walk us through like, you know, what, what is human wildlife conflict with bears? Where is it happening? Why is it happening and, and what are you doing to help mitigate that?

[00:17:58] Colleen Olfenbuttel: Yeah. So, and I will say that when. My agency determines a bear is a problem bear. It's a true problem bear. So first and foremost, a bear seen in someone's neighborhood. That's not a problem bear. That's not a nuisance bear. You know, a bear just doing what bears do and just a person happens to not like seeing it there.

We do not consider that a nuisance bear or a problem bear. For us the problem bears we are seeing are bears that, are posing a risk to human safety. Or causing tremendous property damage. And so North Carolina, we kind of have different types of problems depending on where you are in the state. If you are in eastern North Carolina, the number one problem people have with bears is the damage they do to agricultural crops.

You know, bears love corn, bears love wheat, bears love peanut fields. 

[00:18:53] Katie Perkins: Can you blame? 'em? 

[00:18:53] Colleen Olfenbuttel: I know, I, I can't blame them at all.

And so we see that they can cause actually hundreds, if not millions of dollars of damage to crops. Yeah. Wow. You know, everybody wonders how crop circles are made. It's a black bear in North Carolina 'cause they just sit in that wheat field or that corn field and just pull in everything towards 'em. And we do get crop circles. Whoa. yeah.

[00:19:20] Katie Perkins: That is so interesting. 

[00:19:22] Colleen Olfenbuttel: So luckily a lot of our farmers are fairly tolerant.Plus again, they can sometimes offset their losses by leasing their land to hunters during the hunting season. So that helps build tolerance for bears on the landscape. In other places such as western North Carolina, the main issue we see is bears causing property damage or even human safety concerns, such as breaking into occupied homes. And we're seeing, unfortunately, especially in the last few years, we're seeing more and more incidences of bears breaking into occupied homes and not only doing a lot of damage, but more importantly causing threats to human safety. The root cause of that, well, there's several, but the root cause is unsecured, attractants, the bird feeders, the garbage that gets bears used to being rewarded for being near homes.

And then their progression is to maybe go into a home, but we also have people that purposely feed bears. And they are very much a problem for us because we have seen situations where a bear being fed by someone then resulted in that same bear, breaking into a home or even making contact with someone and injuring them.

So that is our, probably our top challenge these days are the human bear conflicts that result in human safety concerns.

[00:20:45] Katie Perkins: So people feeding bears is doing them more harm than good?

[00:20:50] Colleen Olfenbuttel: Yes, you know, people purposely feeding bears is one of our top challenges. They think they're doing it for the right reasons. other times they're doing it, to be honest, for selfish reasons. They just wanna see the bear up close, which again, to me is a pretty selfish reason because guess what? It's never gonna end well for that bear. We are trying to work with neighborhoods, towns, counties, on ways to address that, and that's through the bear wise program. We are trying to create recognized bear wise communities throughout North Carolina. And a recognized bear wise community can be just a neighborhood, it could be a business, a town, or what have you, but a recognized bear wise community is one in which they've committed to securing attractants.

To keep bears wild and live responsibly with those bears. And so a good example of a recognized bear wise communities, the town of Highlands, It became our first recognized bear wise town about five years ago.

And one reason they were recognized is they actually have an ordinance that prohibits people from purposely feeding bears, as well as they require bear resistant trash cans to secure those attractants. And as a result, they reported, they definitely saw a reduction in human bear interactions after they became a recognized bear wise community. 

[00:22:14] Katie Perkins: How do you see like the ideal harmony between bears and urban communities? Like how are. they coexisting peacefully. What are some steps that we can take?

[00:22:24] Colleen Olfenbuttel: Securing attractants

[00:22:26] Katie Perkins: Yeah, that's, is that, like the root of all problems?

[00:22:28] Colleen Olfenbuttel: That is the root, bears wann and people are, are giving them food either purposefully or incidentally. So it's basically. People secure your attractants. You know, don't leave out open garbage. Don't leave out your bird feeders.

You know, secure your compost if possible. 

Certainly don't feed bears. And to be honest, I'm quite surprised the number of people that are purposely feeding bears in these developed areas. 

 I mean, it's more than we think. and so we are trying to work with counties and cities through their either animal control or their sheriff's office to try to find ways can we stop the person from doing it.

Because unfortunately, people that purposely feed bears, asking them to stop doesn't often work. It's really hard to change human behavior, so sometimes yeah, we might have to mention laws or ordinance or have someone show up with a badge to try to encourage them to do the right thing. Or if we're lucky enough that the person lives in an area with an ordinance that restricts feeding.

We enforce that we have someone enforce that ordinance. But it's the feeding it all comes down to all the food that's available. Other factors certainly apply. We have more bears than we used to have. We have way more people than we used to have. We're one of the, what, the fourth fastest growing state in the country.

So with more bears, more people, of course you're gonna have increased interactions. We are not worried about interactions. You see a bear, whatever. We're worried about the conflicts and we see conflicts usually originating from all the food that people leave for bears.

[00:24:06] Katie Perkins: Yeah. Once a bear becomes habituated, is there any way that, you know, that bear can. You know, unlearn that behavior or be moved to take the temptation away?

Or how does that work?

[00:24:17] Colleen Olfenbuttel: It's, it's hard. So one, we won't relocate the bear. We stopped relocating bears about 20 years ago. 20 years ago we recognized it did not work. It's not a long-term solution. The reason why is if that bear is habituated causing conflicts and you relocate it, three things are gonna happen. One, it's just gonna cause conflicts where you move it. So that's not fair to those people. Two, it might try. It's probably gonna try to get back where you caught it. Bears have a strong homing instinct and so we often see relocated bears try to, they don't stay in the spot you put 'em, they try to return and that leads to the number three thing that can happen. Bears either are successful at returning and then continue to cause problems. Or they die trying to come back. 'cause a, bear moving on the landscape is much more vulnerable to mortality, you know, vehicle mortality or they cause conflicts for someone elseand the person shoots them, which in North Carolina, under state law, if a bear is causing is an act of causing damage, they are a person's allowed to shoot them. So we recognize 20 years ago relocation was not the answer. What was the answer is education and outreach as well as we now with our restored bear populations, we don't wanna grow more bears in North Carolina. We're trying to stabilize that population growth. the main way to do that is through regulated hunting, so that is one way we're trying to at least manage the bear population is through regulated hunting,

[00:25:51] Katie Perkins: Gotcha. 

Stay with us, we'll be right back. Looking to grow your career in wildlife science? The Wildlife Society's Wildlife Biologist Certification Program helps you build credibility, showcase your expertise, and stay on track with your professional development goals. Recognize your growth. Strengthen your impact. Learn more at wildlife.org/certification-programs.

Working out in the field with bears. Can you tell me about, you know, some of your most memorable experiences, uh, either with black bears in North Carolina, or with, you know, I know you were telling me about working in Alaska and that kind of stuff.

What are some stories that come to mind? 

[00:26:28] Colleen Olfenbuttel: It's hard to pick just one.I guess one of the more recent memories I have is, you know, I talked earlier about the urban bear study we had in Asheville.

Towards the end of that study, my dad was visiting from Maine and I wanted to show him around western North Carolina, 'cause it's just one of the most gorgeous places in the country. And so part of that is of course, going on the Blue Ridge Parkway. So we're going along the Blue Ridge Parkway and I see traffic is backed up. And I looked at my dad and I thought, huh. I wonder if there's a bear. 

And so as we scoot forward, you know, we're slowly moving forward. Not only was it a bear, I was right, but it was one of my collared bears from the urban bear study. 

No way. 

It was. And I'm like, oh, that's one of mine. So that was, that was actually pretty cool to see. Thankfully everybody was staying in their cars and taking pictures, from a respectable distance, including me. I took a picture as well 'cause it was pretty exciting. And yeah, she was just on the roadside with her yearling, uh, chewing on some acorns that had fallen in the shoulder of the road. So that was pretty cool to see one of my study animals when I wasn't expecting it.

Yeah. 

But yeah, I've been fortunate that I've gotten to work at a lot of places across the country and my. First field job ever was during college. got to go to Alaska as an intern through the Student Conservation Association, and they basically said, yep, you're doing brown bear habitat surveys and we're gonna fly you from Kodiak to Katmai National Park, drop you off. And then you and your coworker are gonna survey brown bear habitat and then we'll pick you up in a float plane and drop you off someplace else. And mind you, I had very limited camping experience. But we saw lots of bears, lots of brown bears. But we were in an area that those bears at that time rarely saw people, if at all.

So they really didn't know what to make of us and pretty much they ignored us. They just ignored us. So, uh, it was really cool experience to be able to just be hiking.

And In one area, it was a big sedge field and it almost looked like water buffalo out in the open. There were so many brown bears in the high sedge, it looked like water 

[00:28:44] Katie Perkins: Oh my gosh. 

[00:28:45] Colleen Olfenbuttel: And again, you know, we kept our distance and were safe, but they paid us no mind. Because again, they really hadn't been around people at all. So they didn't know what to think of us, but they knew we weren't a threat. So they pretty much left us alone. We did have one young brown bear, a young male who did take an interest in us one time we were in coastal, the coastal part of Katmai and we were decided, you know what?

We don't wanna go hiking through the sedge field 'cause it's high tide and we're just gonna be going through water. So we're like, let's walk along the beach. We can walk along the beach. So we hit the beach. And there were bears on the beach they were clamming, they're taking advantage of some of the seafood.

[00:29:26] Katie Perkins: So cool

Because 

[00:29:27] Colleen Olfenbuttel: you know, again, bears will eat anything. So we were walking along and this young male bear suddenly started looking at us and we kept our eye on it and it started to come towards us and we thought, well, this isn't good. So we started to go back to the tree line. And I just remember, you know, we turned our backs and we were walking to the tree line, and then we hit the tree line and my coworker who turned around and I said, where's the bear? And she goes, it's right behind you. 

[00:29:55] Katie Perkins: That's like that picture perfect moment. Uh, it's behind me, isn't it?

[00:29:59] Colleen Olfenbuttel: Yeah. Yeah. So we, uh, we bolted into the woods and then turned around and yep. The bear's right there looking at us. And so we had bear spray at the time. Took out our bear spray and we're clapping, yelling, doing everything you're supposed to do.

And this bear's just watching us, could care less. And so then I said, okay, let's try the bear spray. And so I do the bear spray. Well, there was a breeze, so it just,

[00:30:27] Katie Perkins: oh no, 

[00:30:27] Colleen Olfenbuttel: It just drifted away. 

So we ended up just backing up, you know, facing the bear and he ended up, kind of looked like he was gonna circle around us. And so we just, thankfully we backed up. We just kind of tried to keep an eye on him until we lost sight. And thankfully we never saw him again. 

And was it a scary situation? Yes. But in the end, you know, we talked about that night, and we pretty much concluded that it just was a young curious bear. He'd never seen things on two legs. And so it was probably all curiosity. Looking back now. I, I was what, 20, 21 years old, my first field job.

 If that were to happen to me now, I would've done things differently. Cause now, you know, I know more about bear behavior and bear biology, but back then I didn't. So it, it was a scary situation at the time. 

[00:31:23] Katie Perkins: Definitely. So how do, how do you remember like. If it's brown, lay down, if it's, you know, I feel like if I am ever in a place that has multiple kinds of bears, I'm like, what do I do?

Oh, if I see one, how do I know which one is which? Like, how do I know what to do? What, what is your advice for that?

[00:31:41] Colleen Olfenbuttel: The only time you have to worry about being in a spot with both black bears and brown bears is if you're in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, or Alaska.

[00:31:50] Katie Perkins: Mm-hmm. 

[00:31:50] Colleen Olfenbuttel: Or Canada,

Yeah,

Western Canada, most places if they have bears, it's a black bear. So if you're in the lower 48 and you're not in Wyoming, Idaho, or Montana, it's gonna be a black bear. Even if you're in California and you see a bear and it's brown, that's a black bear, 'cause we do have bears that are cinnamon colored.

[00:32:10] Katie Perkins: They're trying to trick us.

[00:32:11] Colleen Olfenbuttel: They are trying to trick us. Well, and there's been research that shows the color of a, of a black bear, was evolved because at one point they were a prey species. They were low man on the totem pole, before European, you know, settlement. You had your mountain lions, you had your wolves, you had your grizzly bear.

And so black bears actually could be predated on by those larger predators, or at least killed by them. So yeah, their pelt color evolved based off the habitat they were in, which is why in the west where you have a more arrid climate, they tend to be brown. Whereas here in Eastern United States with our dark deciduous woods, black bears tend to be what you expect, black. So yes, that's that evolved over time. Interesting. 

Now, if you encounter a bear in the lower 48 states, and you're not in Wyoming, Montana, or Idaho. It's a black bear. And in that case, if you encounter a bear, well first the number one piece of advice I tell people, enjoy it. Enjoy it. It's a cool thing.

Enjoy it from a respectful distance, what is that distance? Well, what we like to say is you should be far enough away where you kind of can tell you're not influencing that bear's behavior. You know, it's continuing to eat or maybe it watches you, but then you're far enough away that it just continues walking or feeding.

So that's how you know your respectful distance away, that you're not influencing that black bear's behavior. 

Mm-hmm. 

Now, if the bear keeps watching you or maybe starts to take a step towards you, that's when you should be like, okay, time to leave and just keep backing up, keep it in view, and just leave the area. 

Usually that's enough to resolve any type of situation, but we do see on occasion, maybe the bear decides to follow someone. And so in that case, we recommend to people, you know, just if it's following you, just keep watching it, keep it within your eyesight and continue to back off. If you're comfortable doing so, clap, wave your hands, because if it's following you, it could be for several reasons.

Uh, it could be testing its dominance. Hopefully not, maybe it's, you know, it's, it's viewing you as prey. That's very rare, but it's a possibility. 

Or again, it's curious. So by clapping, showing that you're big, you're showing you're the bigger animal. Now, if it were me, because I've been doing, you know, I've been around bears for years, I would feel comfortable actually, probably not only clapping, shouting, but actually running at it to basically tell it, look. 

[00:34:53] Katie Perkins: You don't wanna mess me 

[00:34:54] Colleen Olfenbuttel: more You don't wanna mess with me, but that's me again. Uh, a lot of people would not be comfortable with that. And I would say, unless you have the experience I have or that other bear biologists have, yeah, just keep it with an eyesight, back off, clap. and so until you get to a place where you're safe, such as your car or a building, but thankfully that's, that's pretty rare.

If people ask me what happens if a black bear makes contact with me. And really probably the best thing to do is just, just be still cover your head, your neck, 'cause if a, there's a couple reasons a black bear might make contact with you and one is maybe somehow views you as a threat. Just like a grizzly bear sometimes makes contact with someone, they view it as a threat.

And so by being still, you're showing that bear, I'm not a threat anymore. And they'll leave. But there are are occasions where if you're doing that and it's not working, the bear continues to attack you, fight back, fight back, fight back against that black bear. And we see that, that when that happens, usually then the bear will retreat.

But again, I wanna emphasize a black bear making contact with someone, let alone then escalating to what would be considered an attack is thankfully very rare. Especially very rare when you think about how many bear black bears are on the landscape now. I mean, we have 20,000 bears. When you think of all the black bears across, even the eastern United States, we're probably close to a hundred thousand bears.

A very robust population living with a lot of people, and we rarely see true, true attacks. 

We rarely see bears making contact, so thankfully most encounters are gonna be a positive encounter.

[00:36:42] Katie Perkins: Mm-hmm. How does that advice differ if you see a grizzly bear?

[00:36:45] Colleen Olfenbuttel: Oh, grizzly bear. So again, I'm, I wouldn't say I'm a grizzly bear expert.

[00:36:50] Katie Perkins: Okay.

[00:36:52] Colleen Olfenbuttel: And I'm gonna also, I'll put that out there.

But for the most part, if a grizzly bear attacks, it is because it views you as a threat. So the advice is to protect your body, protect your head, protect your neck, and just be still. You know, if you happen to have a backpack, try to put it over your sensitive areas and be still, 'cause usually then it doesn't view you as a threat and it will go away.

[00:37:19] Katie Perkins: Okay. Good to know.

[00:37:20] Colleen Olfenbuttel: But again, it's, it's rare. 

[00:37:22] Katie Perkins: Yeah. I did my first hike in Montana. I'm not one that likes to hike alone. And I was so nervous as a Texas girl, like we have black bears coming back into the state, but I'd never seen one in the wild.

I had my bears spray. I had, I was like, I'm that person on the trail. I've got music on right now. Like, I want them to know I'm coming. But yeah, it was totally fine. It was a, it was a very well traveled path, but I was so scared I was gonna see a grizzly bear, so 

[00:37:47] Colleen Olfenbuttel: it's it's good to always be prepared. and actually, one of the bear wise basics we have for being outdoors, is to hike in groups to not hike alone. Mm-hmm. just for safety reasons, whether it's in black bear country, grizzly country, or both.

That's actually one of the bear wise basics. Don't hike alone. Be alert, don't be on your headphones. Be alert. Be aware of the environment, and you should be fine.

[00:38:12] Katie Perkins: Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't wanna be hiking alone but yeah. I was like, well. I can't be in this beautiful place and not see it. So I picked the easiest trail that I knew would have a lot of people on it.

[00:38:22] Colleen Olfenbuttel: You didn't know, but you were being bear wise 

[00:38:24] Katie Perkins: Well, There you 

[00:38:25] Colleen Olfenbuttel: go. 

You're being very alert. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:38:27] Katie Perkins: So Colleen, I don't know a lot about bears and I've learned some really interesting things this week being with you.

Could you tell us like maybe some unexpected characteristics and habits and ways that bears live that people who don't, you know, think about them a lot of the time that, that they wouldn't know? 

[00:38:44] Colleen Olfenbuttel: Well, one, I would say bears are very good at finding den sights. You could be walking in the woods and walk right by a bear den and not even know it because bears, again they like to eat a lot of different foods, but they also like to take advantage of a lot of different den types. So in a more disturbed environment, early successional habitat, such as what we have a lot of here, North Carolina and certain places, you know, they'll mainly have ground dens and it could be a rock cavity, it could be under a fallen tree. It could be an open nest where literally the bear has just pulled up, brush around it and it almost looks like big bird's nest.

[00:39:24] Katie Perkins: So cool.

[00:39:26] Colleen Olfenbuttel: So lots of different varieties of ground nests, including in the urban bear study. We certainly had bears also. Making ground dens out of people's crawl spaces or underneath their porches. Those are perfect dens. Yeah. They didn't have to do anything. Just go underneath and they're protected from the weather. It's a very secured environment. but in areas with more mature trees, they will den in trees. That is a preference by these bears 'cause ding up in a tree that has a cavity. It's very protective from the elements. It's fairly insulated and they're less likely to get disturbed, whether it's by people, dogs, or other bears. So we do see a preference for tree dens. It's just, it's really hard to get a tree to get old enough to, then it has a cavity that's large enough for a bear to fit in, though. That being said, if a bear can fit its head through a hole, it will squeeze its entire body as well.

[00:40:23] Katie Perkins: Really, 

[00:40:24] Colleen Olfenbuttel: There's a video, we have of a bear that, uh, left a den it had in someone's crawlspace, and the hole it left was this big and it left. And we're like, so that's how they can squeeze in through such a tight hole. It was pretty impressive. So that's one thing. And again, you could walk by a bear den and not even know it, uh, because the opening can be so small And. you know, something else, especially in the south, that a lot of people either don't know or have a misconception, and I get this all the question is, well, our bears don't hibernate. Or if they do, it's not true hibernation, it's torpor. That is not true, bears do hibernate. It's just a different form of hibernation.

You know what are considered the true hibernators are like your rodent species or bad species that drop their body temperature to almost freezing. 

So those are considered the true hibernators. Well, bears do drop their temperature, their body temperature, but only about, about 10 degrees or so. But other things happen.

Their heart rate lowers, you know, their, breathing lowers, and they basically go through physiological change in which somehow their hunger is suppressed. Because during hibernation, they don't eat, they don't drink, and they don't defecate or urinate. Even true hibernators will wake up on occasion and defecate and urinate.

Bears can go months without doing that.

[00:41:50] Katie Perkins: Interesting. 

[00:41:51] Colleen Olfenbuttel: It is fascinating. They can also remain still for weeks to months and not suffer from bone loss or muscle loss. And just think the last time you were sick, say you had COVID and you were stuck in bed for the day, you remember, you know, you get outta bed and you're like, oh. yeah, it takes a second to be able to walk.

If that's 'cause you've already started to suffer from some muscle loss, that doesn't happen to hibernating bears.

[00:42:17] Katie Perkins: Is there research, like showing how that's happening? Like hormones or, you know what,

[00:42:22] Colleen Olfenbuttel: There is active research, you know, people doing research for human health. 

They've been trying to study, uh, hibernating bears for at least 20 to 30 years to learn how do they not suffer bone loss, muscle loss. They're even looking at bears to what they can learn about depression in people. I don't know if they have the answers yet, but yeah, they're certainly looking at bears for answers for human health.

[00:42:46] Katie Perkins: That, yeah. 'cause you think about, you know, like if you're injured and you're in a hospital bed for a long time, like that's such a big concern, is that loss of muscle and bone. And if they could figure out, you know, what is that, that bears have, can we recreate that in humans? That is just fascinating.

I was actually gonna ask about hibernation because you know, as a kid in elementary school, they're like, oh, the bears crawl into a hole and they go to sleep, and then they wake up and you're like, okay, well that's what hibernation is, I guess. And then, you know, you start to get older and I'm like, is that actually what hibernation is?

But so bears, will they get up and move around? Is it kind of a case by case basis or do they just like hunker down, have their cubs if they're a female and pregnant and things like that, or, 

[00:43:30] Colleen Olfenbuttel: Well, it depends on the bear and it depends on where you are in the country. We, we do see in northern climates that most bears hibernate, and most bears will hibernate for a longer period of time.

Whereas in the south we see that bears hibernate for a a shorter amount of time. Although we are seeing some bears not hibernate at all. Now most bears in the south still hibernate, but we are seeing more and more bears not hibernate. And the reason why is everybody thinks hibernation is driven by cold temperatures, eh?

no, not really. I mean, what cold temperatures do is stop the growing season for natural forbes and natural foods. So what's really driving hibernation is the lack of natural foods on the 

[00:44:19] Katie Perkins: Scarcity. 

[00:44:19] Colleen Olfenbuttel: Scarcity. And so what we're seeing in the South and in North Carolina is that even so, natural foods are scarce in the winter time. What is not scarce in the wintertime are the anthropogenic foods, the human provided food sources, the bird feeders, the garbage, the compost, and people purposely feeding bears. So one of the main drivers for hibernation for bears does not exist in certain areas of North Carolina. 

So we do see that male bears and then female bears that don't have cubs. So either they're barren or they have yearlings. They might not hibernate because of all the human provided food resources that are available, but we see that our females with cubs will always hibernate because the den, whether it's a nest or a cave or under a fallen tree that they've excavated or a treeden, it's a very safe place for them to have their cubs 

[00:45:18] Katie Perkins: So if you see bears in the winter, it's maybe like a little tip off that something in this community is feeding these bears.

[00:45:26] Colleen Olfenbuttel: It's most certainly a tip off. You know, I worked for Massachusetts, as I mentioned, as their fur bear biologist, but I helped out the bear biologist and one winter we were waiting for this female to go into hibernation so we could switch out her collar.

She never hibernated, and this is in Massachusetts. Despite there being like three feet of snow on the ground, she never hibernated. And it was because we found out the neighborhood was giving her bird seed, so she had bird seed all winter long. She didn't eat, hibernate despite three feet of snow, despite a Massachusetts winter, which can be pretty cold. The food was available.

[00:46:04] Katie Perkins: Yeah, I, I definitely thought that it was all temperature driven, so that is so cool to learn.

Well, looking forward in North Carolina, what is the future of, black bears? How can people be more bear wise and, and help this population and understand it a little bit more? 

[00:46:22] Colleen Olfenbuttel: So, you know, for a couple decades, our goal was to grow more bears. That's what I like to say. You increase the bear population. So we, we've successfully done that. So now what we are doing is trying to stabilize population growth. 

We have plenty of bears on the landscape, so we're not trying to cause a decline, we're just trying to cause that population to level off. Neither growing nor decreasing. And that's a very hard needle to thread. The main way we're doing it is by using regulated hunting, 'cause that is the number one cause of mortality of black bears in North Carolina.

And that's a great thing, 'cause guess what? I can regulate hunting. If I need more bears in an area, I tighten down on hunting. I make it more conservative. If I need, you know, not fewer bears, but I need to stabilize that population, I liberalize hunting. 

But regardless, I'm regulating it. I'm turning on and off the faucet.

Other forms of mortality for bears, such as vehicle collisions, or, or other sources, I can't regulate that like disease. I can't regulate So I wanna take advantage of hunting to manage the population. So that's where we are now in North Carolina to manage the actual population is how can we use hunting. in a regulated way to meet our population objectives. And, and one of the biggest challenges we have of using regulated hunting is, as I've mentioned, we're one of the fastest growing states in the country. So we're seeing an increase in unhuntable landscapes, places where hunters can't hunt cause it's now a subdivision.

Mm-hmm. So that's gonna be our challenge, is how can we manage bears using regulated hunting when we're seeing a decline of huntable lands, I don't have the answer,

 But we're, we're talking about that now as we update our current black bear management plan. Now the other challenge we have that we've been talking about today is the increase in human bear interactions.

 But that can address through education, outreach just trying to get people to change their behavior. We can do the education and outreach via bear wise. It's changing people's behavior that is hard to do. So it's, it's continuing to explore how can we convince people to do the right thing. And we started to do research on that and we'll continue to try to do research or support research to answer how can we change people's behaviors to live responsibly with black bears.

[00:48:54] Katie Perkins: Awesome. Well, Colleen, thank you so much. I know I learned so much talking to you, and I hope everyone listening walks away with something. They were like, wow, I did not know that. But we appreciate you being a member of TWS and sharing your knowledge with us and join us today on the podcast. 

[00:49:09] Colleen Olfenbuttel: Yeah uh, I could talk to you about bears all day long, so I appreciate that being the topic of today's podcast. It was fun. Thank you. 

[00:49:16] Katie Perkins: Thanks for tuning in to the Our Wild Lives Podcast, brought to you by The Wildlife Society. If you're loving what you hear, could you help us out? Rate our show and leave a review, send this episode to a friend, or share your thoughts and tag us on socials @TheWildlifeSociety. Want to get more involved in the world of wildlife conservation? Head to wildlife.org. We'll catch you next week with more stories from the wild.