01/07/2025
This is the path of Bear 609. After displaying increasingly bold and food-conditioning behavior at a backcountry site in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, officials chose to capture the five-year-old bear, fit her with a GPS collar, and relocate her 60 miles from Great Smoky Mountains National Park to southern Cherokee National Forest in eastern Tennessee.
Tracking bears in the Great Smokies and beyond is helping park scientists discover the fates of relocated bears.
Park biologists actively deter bears that show any early signs of food-conditioning. This helps prevent the need for bears to be relocated. Park visitors can also help prevent relocations from being necessary.
“If we allow bears to get our garbage, they know to come to us, and if we allow that to continue over time, they become bolder and bolder and bolder,” Bill Stiver, Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s supervisory wildlife biologist, says. “By allowing bears to get that food and garbage, even if it’s a little bit at night, you’re starting that process, just like training your dog, and we don’t want that process to start.”
Bear Tracks: https://www.nationalparks.org/stories/bear-tracks
📸: Bear 609's movements from May 30 - November 30, 2022 (Kristin Botzet)
