It’s not bedtime quite yet for at least three bears in the Juneau area — one in the Auke Bay ferry terminal area, one downtown and one on Back Loop.
The one in Auke Bay has been awake for at least a month, said biologist Stephanie Sell, who deals with the bear calls that come into the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Juneau. The other two have been seen once, without being seen again — so they may have returned to hibernation , or not.
The Auke Bay bear has been getting into trash and bird feeders.
“If (bears) have access to attractants, they’re not going to go to bed,” she said. “People can’t let their guard down in the winter time.”
Ryan Scott, regional supervisor of the Division of Wildlife Conservation for ADF&G, said it may not be temperature that keeps the bears awake.
“Typically, what drives a bear out of a den is lack of energetic preparation for winter,” he said.
Younger bears, he said, might do a bad job choosing a place to hibernate and have to move around to find a new one.
“If they’re not energetically prepared to hibernate… and if there’s food available, they’re going to take advantage of it,” he said.
However, the recent mild weather “certainly doesn’t help with things,” Sell said.
ADF&G usually receives calls about a few bears over the winter, Sell said.
“Usually one or two is typical this time of year, and certainly with the mild winters we’ve been having, it’s not unexpected, but this is a few more than we usually see,” she said. “We do know that they’re out and about, so be diligent…. We need people’s help… so we don’t continue to breed generations of garbage bears.”
• Contact Juneau Empire Outdoors editor Mary Catharine Martin at maryc.martin@juneauempire.com.
More bears than normal are out and about for this time of year, said ADF&G wildlife biologist Stephanie Sell.
The bear awake around the Auke Bay ferry terminal pauses along a chain-link fence on Jan. 24.
