The northern zone early black bear season begins in less than a month (Sept. 18) and bear hunters should be aware of a project that is under way in which they can play a major role.
The results could go a long way toward predicting future bear behavior.
Courtney LaMere, a graduate student at the SUNY College of Environmental Forestry (ESF) in Syracuse is currently studying the correlation between black bear reproduction and food availability in the central Adirondacks. The Adirondack Black Bear Project, which is expected to wrap up in the summer of 2011, is being federally funded with Pittman-Roberston funds that are generated through a tax on sporting arms and ammunition and channeled back into state and local wildlife projects.
LaMere, originally from Baldwinsville in central New York, did her undergrad work at the University of Vermont before embarking on other professional projects, including studies on grizzly bears and sea lamprey eels. Now for her graduate work she is working with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation on the black bear project.
LaMere has spent most of the summer at the Adirondack Ecological Center in Newcomb gathering black bear harvest data from the DEC and also past bear-human conflict information collected over the years from both the DEC and the Wildlife Conservation Society in Saranac Lake.
How can hunters help?
LaMere would like successful hunters harvesting sow (female) black bears everywhere in the northern zone this season to collect both the uterus and ovaries when field-dressing the animal. She says they'll fit in a sandwich bag and should be frozen and eventually dropped off at a collection site, of which she has a list.
Upon collection of the organs she'll be able to determine cub birth numbers and other data, which she intends to cross-reference with food availability, primarily beechnuts, and determine what many scientists believe is a correlation between offspring numbers, nuisance complaints and food availability.
"Every year there are bears getting into garbage cans and bird feeders," she said of the nuisance bears (not to mention breaking into camps). "Maybe there's a way we can predict it."
While bears rely on a number of foods in a given area, LaMere is focusing this study on beechnut availability, which she says on average is up and down every other year. It's also a primary food in the area of the study that is expected to show that bear nuisance encounters rise in years of low beechnut production.
On the ESF website (see below) are photos depicting where the ovaries and uterus of a sow bear can be found. LaMere also has handouts that she is distributing around the area.
"It's like a Y-shaped structure," she said of the uterus. "Hunters just need to cut above the bladder and put it in a sandwich bag and freeze it, and I need it to be labeled."
LaMere has been talking with hunter safety instructors about what to go over during their field-dressing instructions and anticipates a good year for food availability.
"This is an excellent year for crops," she said. "Bears are opportunistic; they find that stand of beech and you see the claw marks from years and years on those beech trees. Those are the ones they hit. They sit there and eat until they're full."
Dan Ladd is the author of "Deer Hunting in the Adirondacks," outdoors editor for the Glens Falls Chronicle, columnist for Outdoors Magazine and contributor to New York Outdoor News. Contact him at www.adkhunter.com.
