Recommendations offered for better coexistence
Humans and black bears have similar tastes when it comes to choosing where to live. Here in the Methow Valley, bears have historically sought habitat along waterways in the valley bottoms, where natural food is abundant.
And that is where the greatest population growth in the Methow Valley has taken place over the years, with human development increasingly concentrated in the same areas preferred by black bears.
As many Methow Valley residents know from experience, when humans and bears occupy the same space, conflicts can arise.
A recent study on human-bear interactions in the Methow Valley examines sources of conflict and offers recommendations to improve human-bear coexistence.
The “Methow Valley Community Bear Assessment” was prepared by Home Range Wildlife Research (HRWR), a local nonprofit research organization. It was commissioned by Defenders of Wildlife, a national wildlife conservation and advocacy organization.
Despite human development, valley bottoms still offer valuable natural food for bears, which eat a wide variety of foods including plants (grasses, sedges, leaves and stems of herbaceous plants, roots, nuts, and berries) as well as fish, ungulates, carrion, and insect larvae.
But as humans move in, they bring other food sources that attract bears — things like garbage, bird feeders, fruit trees, bee hives and chicken coops. These human-related sources of food (called anthropogenic) are the cause of most reported human-bear conflict, the HRWR assessment said.
“Bears are extremely curious, smart and calorically motivated. Once their curiosity is rewarded with a high value (calorically dense) food source, they may become persistent in seeking out similar food sources,” the assessment said.
Because bears are such smart animals, they may develop new foraging habits immediately after discovering human-related sources of food like garbage cans, compost piles, bee hives or chicken coops. And if bears decide that these anthropogenic foods make for easy eating, the behavior can escalate, posing a threat to human safety and property, and often resulting in bears being lethally removed, according to the assessment.
Outdoor recreation, which continues to grow in and around the Methow Valley, also provides increased opportunities for human-bear interactions on trails and campgrounds and other outdoor recreation facilities.
Community vulnerabilities
Interactions between humans and bears in the Methow Valley have involved only black bears. But, the assessment noted, with recently announced plans to reintroduce grizzly bears to the North Cascades Ecosystem, the Methow Valley “may be one of the first communities [in the region] where residents interact with grizzlies, increasing the importance of understanding its vulnerabilities to conflict with both bear species.”
The assessment authors said the study follows a format that been widely used by communities where humans overlap with black and grizzly bears (like Missoula, Montana, and Pemberton, BC) to understand patterns of human-bear conflict.
According to data from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), an estimated 1,000 adult black bears live in the Methow Valley watershed. Recreational hunting is the largest cause of mortality, killing about 10 percent of the black bear population annually, the assessment said.
Habitat loss and fragmentation due to human development, wildfires and climate change also impact black bears. However, wildfires, which have burned 59% of the Methow Valley watershed since 2000, are not necessarily bad for bears in the long term, the assessment noted. After a year or two, when vegetation recovers, burned areas provide good food sources for bears, such as berry-producing shrubs.
In 2022, HRWR launched an ongoing community science project to determine whether shortages of natural bear foods, specifically berries, result in more conflict between humans and bears.
HRWR has also conducted a survey of residents to better understand where bear attractants are concentrated in the Methow Valley, which attractants are most common, and what steps community members are taking to secure them. Among the survey respondents, 81% reported having one or more attractants and 69% of those with attractants reported taking steps to secure their attractants.
WDFW is responsible for responding to wildlife interactions and conflict reports. During a six-year period from 2018-2023, WDFW received 33 calls related to bears from the Mazama area, 73 calls from the Winthrop area, and 28 calls from the Twisp area. (Calls from the lower valley were not included in the WDFW summary.)
The number of calls was highest in 2022, with a total of 77 calls, three times more than any other year between 2018-2023. The largest cause of conflict was bears seeking human food sources. WDFW lethally removed five bears in that period, all of them in 2022.
With so many people moving to the Methow Valley recently, WDFW staff have found that new residents are often the primary segment of the population to make complaints about bears. “Many do not realize there are bears here, do not employ any sort of coexistence strategies, and may not be accustomed to seeing wildlife in close proximity,” the report said.
Since 2019, WDFW no longer relocates bears involved in conflicts, so options for resolving conflicts are limited to reducing and securing bear attractants, or killing nuisance bears.
WDFW enforcement officers say Methow Valley residents generally do not want bears to be euthanized due to conflict, and as a result take their responsibility to reduce attractants seriously, the bear assessment said.
Garbage and compost are prime attractants for bears, and the HRWR’s community assessment evaluated how garbage collection is handled in the valley. Waste Wise Methow, the only solid waste hauler in the Methow Valley, has explored using bear-resistant curbside cans, as well as bear-resistant communal dumpsters, although cost has presented a significant barrier to both approaches.
Recommendations
The community assessment identified three main barriers to coexisting with bears: lack of proactive, consistent and cohesive efforts to provide education and outreach to the community about living with bears; the need for more bear-resistant infrastructure (like electric fencing and secure garbage collection) in both residential and commercial spaces; and limited options for enforcing regulations on securing attractants.
The report provided recommendations to address the barriers, noting that all recommendations would require funding. The recommendations include:
• Employment of a human-bear coexistence coordinator to organize education on living with bears and to facilitate valley-wide efforts to improve bear-resistant infrastructure. The assessment also recommended establishing a human-bear coexistence committee or working group, noting that there are “several organizations in the valley currently invested in forming such a committee.”
• Improving bear-resistant infrastructure in residential and commercial space, beginning with installation of communal dumpsters in certain neighborhoods (such as the Wolf Creek and Rendezvous areas in Winthrop, and Lost River in Mazama) for both trash and recycling. The assessment recommends replacing conventional trash cans with bear-resistant cans where dumpsters are not feasible; adding electric fencing to waste, recycling and compost aggregation facilities, and adding electric fencing to individual households where necessary. Outside funding to subsidize landowners’ costs will be an important part of creating bear-resistant infrastructure.
• Developing and enforcing ordinances to reduce conflict. While many residents are eager to coexist peacefully with wildlife, reducing conflict requires accountability from residents for securing attractants and following other coexistence strategies. There are state laws related to securing attractants from wildlife, but there are currently no town or county ordinances or rules that relate to bear coexistence in the Methow Valley. “Experience in other communities has shown that local ordinances (that can be enforced proactively with warnings) have improved compliance with bear-resistant measures, whereas exclusively voluntary actions have been less effective across a whole community,” the assessment said.
“The Methow Valley,” the community assessment concluded, “is uniquely poised to both examine and mitigate human-bear interactions before conflict becomes a widespread problem, and successful coexistence subsequently becomes harder to achieve.”
Implementing the assessment’s recommendations will require support from the community, WDFW and other organizations dedicated to human-bear coexistence, the assessment said.
“Through this implementation, the Methow Valley can both decrease potential human-bear conflict locally and serve as a model for other communities facing similar coexistence challenges in the intermountain West.”
The Methow Valley Community Bear Assessment is available on the Home Range Wildlife Research website: www.homerange.org/research/publications.
