In western NC, calling about a bear is one step up from calling about a squirrel. It’s really unlikely that anyone would do anything about it. We just live with bears. Attacks on people are really really rare. Here’s the best I can find:
The article talks about “bear contacts,” which as near as I can tell involves physical contact between a bear and a human. Some key stats:
In the last 20 years, there have been 32 such contacts in all NC
16 of those non-hunting contacts were in Buncombe County, where Black Mountain is.
16 of them involved dogs
Of the 9 that didn’t involve dogs, 5 involved food (bird feeders, trash cans, idiots who feed bears).
More than half of all the contacts in the last 20 years are in the past five years.
There have been “several” injuries over this period, but as near as I can tell, they involved dogs and were minor. Later in the article the author quotes a biologist: “The worst case-scenario for Buncombe county/Asheville is that someone is eventually seriously injured by a bear,” which makes me think there hasn’t been a serious injury yet.
None of which is to say that it’s great times having an unafraid bear come up on your porch. But it’s really common around here, and the only thing that can happen from calling the authorities is that they’ll give some advice, the same kind of advice in this article.
Bears indeed are common here. But this is our first bear to be so aggressive. And as it is likely this bear is the survivor from the group that were euthanized after home break-ins so it seems to have learned the wrong habits.
I am not sure bears unlearn as fast as they learn.
My cabin borders the Shenandoah National Park, we have a bear that hibernates on our land. The state, county and feds take calls about bears very seriously, not because they are worried about people, but about the bears. My friend is a retired ranger and they would trap problem bears and take them far into the Jefferson National Forest to release them because if they didn’t the locals would complain to their bosses and make their jobs difficult.
Moments ago. I am on the same porch as yesterday. My wife is out watering her garden as the hit-and-miss thunderstorms have been mostly miss here. Her flower garden is just across the sidewalk to the porch, pretty much where the problem bear was yesterday. My job while reading is somewhat-jokingly to keep an eye out for the bear while she attends to the flowers.
There is a rustle from the side yard. A bear appears. But this is not our problem bear but a much smaller one. I yell out “bear!” and the small and skittish bears runs away fast. Moments later it is followed by another small bear which also is trying to get away from us as quickly as possible. No sign of mama.
Bear encounters like this occur frequently here. The bears behaved as they should and we get to appreciate the joy of living in a fairly wild environment quite close to town. These bears did not want to bother us. We did not want to bother them. Peaceful co-existence. It is when humans screw it up that the problems occur.
That said we have had at least one bear in our yard in seven out of eleven days in June so far. And this is only what we have seen. How many do we not see?