{"id":63689,"date":"2020-09-20T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-21T06:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/more-young-bears-less-food-send-them-to-juneaus-garbage\/"},"modified":"2020-09-20T22:30:00","modified_gmt":"2020-09-21T06:30:00","slug":"more-young-bears-less-food-send-them-to-juneaus-garbage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/more-young-bears-less-food-send-them-to-juneaus-garbage\/","title":{"rendered":"More young bears, less food send them to Juneau’s garbage"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Associated Press<\/ins><\/strong><\/p>\n

A larger than normal number of young bears and dwindling natural food supply for them are forcing the animals to head for Juneau’s garbage with unusual frequency, a wildlife official said.<\/p>\n

A poor berry crop and lackluster salmon runs this year mean more bears are looking for food among the city’s trash, KTOO Public Media in Juneau reported.<\/p>\n

Conditions have made bears desperate to fatten themselves before they hibernate for the winter, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said.<\/p>\n

Abby McAllister, a wildlife education and outreach specialist with the agency, said more bears are competing for the smaller amount of available food.<\/p>\n

A better berry crop and decent fish runs last year meant more new cubs survived the winter.<\/p>\n

Those young bears have recently been kicked out by their mothers and need to fend for themselves, but are still inexperienced, McAllister said.<\/p>\n

[Bear breaks into car chasing the scent of pizza<\/a>]<\/ins><\/p>\n

“They’re kind of like a teenager on their own for the first time just trying to figure out things,” she said. “They make a lot of mistakes along the way.”<\/p>\n

There have been 687 bear-related calls so far this year to Fish and Game and the Juneau Police Department, double the number for the same period last year.<\/p>\n

The calls involved 13 different bears. Four were moved away from the city and nine were killed because they posed threats to life or property.<\/p>\n

Loren Brown, Juneau site manager for garbage utility Alaska Waste, told Juneau Assembly members that about 1,500 of 8,000 residential customers have bear-resistant trash cans, which automatically unload when turned upside down by a garbage truck lift.<\/p>\n

“None of them are bear-proof,” Brown said.<\/p>\n

There is a waiting list of 100 customers for the newest, bear-resistant trash cans, and 350 have been ordered, Brown said.<\/p>\n

“This year is the worst it’s been in years,” Brown said. “It’s just hard to say what number is enough.”<\/p>\n

• This is an Associated Press report. <\/em><\/ins><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A poor berry crop and lackluster salmon runs contribute. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":63690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[261,75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-63689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-bears","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63689","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\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63689"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=63689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}