Black bears have moved north from the Catskills over the past few years. And why not? There is an increased amount of suitable habitat that allows them to live in our backyards. Let's face it - animals have the ability to adapt.
Fifty to seventy-five years ago there were far more farms than there are today. Every available field was mowed and tilled to provide food for cows and crops for market. Heck, from West Oneonta to Morris there were once 17 or 18 working farms. Today there are only a couple. The small family farm has long disappeared.
I live on our old farm. It has been in my family for 148 years. Our barn was built to hold Jersey cattle that were smaller than the large, milk-producing Holsteins of today. At the peak we could only milk 34 cows, but my ancestors made a good living for the times, even providing butter for several mom-and-pop stores in Oneonta.
Like our farm the pastures have grown up to brush lots and trees and many of the fields have gone out of production, thus creating habitat for animals.
For some reason there was a sudden influx of bears in the area a few years ago. They were looking in windows in Morris, wandering the roads and streets and checking out backyards. Bears were becoming a nuisance. They tore down bird feeders and destroyed farmers' crops.
The DEC has learned over the years that you just don't live trap nuisance bears and move them to a different area. They carry on the same tactics in their new area, creating problems. That left one solution – open a hunting season and let hunters control the problem. It works.
I had a neighbor call me one afternoon. "I've got a bear on my back porch."
Jokingly I responded, "Feed him jelly donuts. He's really fond of them."
The neighbor wasn't thrilled with my joke, so I told him to send him up to my house.
A farmer just outside of Poland had bears destroying acres of corn each night, so he put up signs reading "Bear Hunters Wanted." It was the only way to stop them. It helped.
There were rumors going around that the DEC was releasing the bears into our area. I heard stories that New Jersey was controlling its growing bear population by trapping them and releasing them in the Catskills at night. I heard the same thing about the coyotes and the mountain lions that sometimes roam our area.
The DEC doesn't have to release them. They have moved in on their own to fill a niche and have increased in numbers ever since. Coyotes were not brought in to reduce the deer population, and it was not funded by insurance companies to reduce the number of deer-car accidents.
In many areas where the population is encroaching on the animal's habitat, they learn to adapt to civilization. Just drive up West Street towards the colleges. There are more deer in the roads than pedestrians. People have e-mailed me, "They're eating all my plants and shrubs."
My response was to get the city let bow hunters harvest some of them. She didn't like that answer.
Let's face it. Wild animals are here to stay. Enjoy watching them and stock up on jelly donuts.
