Have they given up on the whole polar bears thing?
Black bears are threatened by climate change. How can we help?
Black bear encounters are on the rise in Tennessee, and climate change is often a hidden culprit, tampering with ecosystems in unexpected ways.
Along a steep, forested hillside in Gatlinburg, Janelle Musser, a biologist with the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency, is looking for black bears.
Within minutes, a woman in the distance calls out excitedly.
It’s a female bear, maybe about 200 pounds, and she has two cubs with her.
“Oh my goodness, look at them,” Musser whispers.
Bears? In Tennessee? Who knew?
“If you come home and someone’s been making chocolate chip cookies in your house, and you think how amazing that smells, now imagine being able to smell that a mile away,” Musser said.
The trend is, in part, driven by convenience for the bears. They are opportunistic feeders. Last summer, for example, bears were content gorging on cicadas during the emergence of a 17-year brood. They mostly just sat up in trees during that time, Musser said.
But there is another, quieter factor: climate change.
And here we go
Bears used to cover all of Tennessee.
After centuries of hunting, mining and logging, they retreated to the high terrain of the Appalachian Mountains.
Populations have since grown, and the state now has an estimated 6,000 bears. But their forest habitat is under threat, according to Matt Drury, science director of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy.
That all sounds like land use and environmental destruction
Climate change poses additional challenges.
Take extreme weather events like Hurricane Helene: Two years ago, rapid wind and record rainfall flowed down the mountains and knocked down hundreds of thousands of acres of forest. Then, non-native plants seized the opportunity to spread and knock out native species, disrupting a web of animals in the process.
A lack of rainfall is also a significant issue. In the third week of May, Great Smoky Mountains National Park was in severe drought.
A once in a blue moon event that none can say is unusual for a Holocene warm period, the same as with drought periods. Anyhow, there’s plenty more doom and gloom in the article, and even a mention of polar bears, if you care to read the full doomsday cult screed.
Read: LOL: Now Black Bears Are Threatened By Hotcoldwetdry »
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