Download and ShareWith close to 300,000 residents, Anchorage is Alaska’s largest city, but it is still a relatively small enclave of human settlement in the vast Alaskan wilderness that surrounds it. While this untamed natural environment is perhaps Anchorage’s biggest attraction, it also presents the city with some unique challenges--not least of which is residents’ sometimes uneasy co-existence with bears.
While the approximately 60 brown “grizzly” bears local to Anchorage tend to avoid humans, preferring to remain in the woods and salmon-filled streams on the outskirts of town, the 200-300 strong population of smaller black bears has proven much more adaptable to urban environments. The black bears’ foraging and scavenging skills--originally developed to better locate carcasses and other sustenance in often harsh sub-arctic environments--are well suited to locating easy meals in unsecured garbage cans dispersed throughout Anchorage’s residential neighborhoods.
Anchorage residents are divided about how best to deal with the black bears. Their presence is regarded by many as a charming--if occasionally inconvenient--element of their uniquely natural environment. The bears aren’t hunting for people, they maintain, but rather left-behind food scraps, and they are fairly easily scattered back into the woods. Those with this more permissive perspective are more likely to accept their own relative newcomer status to Alaska and adapt themselves to the wildlife--including black bears--more native than themselves.
On the other side of the debate are those who argue for stricter controls on the bear population by allowing freer hunting of the animals. They point to a rising incidence of human-bear encounters as the human population grows and pushes out further into the wilderness. While violent encounters have been rare--mostly involving larger and rarer grizzlies--black bears have become very common sights, and many residents are concerned about how future generations of these readily adaptive black bears will interact with humans. Unlike the more solitary and evasive grizzlies, black bears have lived unhunted among Anchorage’s neighborhoods for years, growing accustomed to humans, and perhaps no longer having what many would consider to be a healthy respect for us.
What most people in Anchorage can agree on is that greater public awareness of bear behavior is necessary. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has conducted a door-to-door outreach campaign to heighten awareness of what attracts bears and how to avoid provoking dangerous reactions from them, and laws have recently been passed prohibiting trash from being put out except on pickup day.
NARRATOR: There are hundreds of miles of trails throughout anchorage heavily trafficked by people and wildlife.
JESSY: Yeah, it’s really surprising because you see all these tracks, but it’s just kind of a pocket of wilderness, surrounded by residential areas.
CHRIS: What do you think? Dog or bear?
JESSY: I’m voting dog.
JESSY: this one looks a little a more like…
JESSY: Could be both…
CHRIS: You mean the one you found?
JESSY: The one I found actually looks like bear, and what you found probably is dog.
CHRIS: ok fair enough, let’s move on.
NARRATOR: Anchorage is one of the few cities with a healthy brown bear population and during salmon season, brown bears dominate these trails but you’d never now they were here unless you were looking for them for the most part brown bear avoid people, often stepping off a path moments before people pass through. Black bears on the other hand have learned to adapt more readily this boldness has become challenging for rick and his team.
Rick: Bears are very curious and experimental animals and they learn fast, as fast as we do. You’d be amazed at what’s in people’s garbage, and then you start seeing every garbage can as an opportunity.
Rick: Go on! He’s not the least bit afraid of us. Go on! Shoo Shoo!
Rick: I’m surprised we don’t have hundreds of bears, you know,cruising the streets, getting into garbage cans, and making life hell for everybody. But it’s just a few.
Rick: He’ll have this one down next – sunflower seeds – he’ll trash that next.
Rick: A black bear is like a 200-pound raccoon, you don’t want to mess with them, but they’re not looking for…they’re not killing people in a defensive mode. We’re not blasé about it, but we’re trying to address the problem by reducing the garbage, and not by just shooting or moving black bears.
NARRATOR: Despite all that Rick and Jessy are doing, the reality is that the bears here will become more and more urban. And what does that mean? Is it a bear that instinctually looks both ways as it crosses the street? Knows when garbage day is in their home range?
A mother bear with young cubs has a home range of just a few miles and in the city that means her cubs learn to be comfortable in whatever environment that is.
Humans have a real uncanny ability to try and control their environment you know. If you move into bear country does that mean that you take everything that bear country brings with it? Or are you willing to take steps that actually enable you to live in that wilderness area or are you less inclined? Do you want to control your environment more where you live? Really does come down to that one question, how much wild are people in Anchorage willing to tolerate?
Loading Standards
Background Essay
Print Background Essay
