It\u2019s not bedtime quite yet for at least three bears in the Juneau area \u2014 one in the Auke Bay ferry terminal area, one downtown and one on Back Loop. <\/p>\n
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 \u2014 so they may have returned to hibernation , or not. <\/p>\n
The Auke Bay bear has been getting into trash and bird feeders.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf (bears) have access to attractants, they\u2019re not going to go to bed,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople can\u2019t let their guard down in the winter time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ryan Scott, regional supervisor of the Division of Wildlife Conservation for ADF&G, said it may not be temperature that keeps the bears awake.<\/p>\n
\u201cTypically, what drives a bear out of a den is lack of energetic preparation for winter,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Younger bears, he said, might do a bad job choosing a place to hibernate and have to move around to find a new one. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf they\u2019re not energetically prepared to hibernate\u2026 and if there\u2019s food available, they\u2019re going to take advantage of it,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
However, the recent mild weather \u201ccertainly doesn\u2019t help with things,\u201d Sell said. <\/p>\n
ADF&G usually receives calls about a few bears over the winter, Sell said. <\/p>\n
\u201cUsually one or two is typical this time of year, and certainly with the mild winters we\u2019ve been having, it\u2019s not unexpected, but this is a few more than we usually see,\u201d she said. \u201cWe do know that they\u2019re out and about, so be diligent\u2026. We need people\u2019s help\u2026 so we don\u2019t continue to breed generations of garbage bears.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact Juneau Empire Outdoors editor Mary Catharine Martin at maryc.martin@juneauempire.com. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s not bedtime quite yet for at least three bears in the Juneau area \u2014 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":15396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[149],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-15395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-outdoors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15395"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}