Vermonters, you live in bear country now.

That’s the word from Northwestern District Game Warden Chad Barrett, who said the reason for the increased black bear activity in Vermont in general, and Waterbury in particular, is humans, not bears.

“We're now considering Vermont bear country, just because we realized that the bears are smart enough now, or I guess they’ve always been smarter,” Barrett said in a recent interview. “The bears are realizing that it's easier for them to live closer to us because they can get more food and do less work to get it.”

Bear activity has increased in residential areas across the state in recent years, and in Waterbury, reports of bears breaking into cars have surfaced this summer. 

While the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department has issued repeated guidance to Vermonters about taking in bird feeders and securing compost containers, trash bins and dumpsters, not everyone is heeding the message and bears continue their activities near humans. That’s because if 50 people in a neighborhood are bear-proofing all food sources – and one person isn’t – the bears won’t leave that neighborhood, Barrett said.

“More has to be done overall,” the warden explained. “The people that have had the issues with the bears, it seems, have pretty much heeded the warnings and now the bears are realizing, ‘Okay, I can't feed where I used to, but now I can feed five houses down at this condo complex, or I go down the mountain, three quarters of a mile or a mile to the next one. They didn't have a problem with me last year, so I'm going to rampage that because they've got everything unsecured.”

A black bear 'turns' the compost bin at the Hackett home on Gregg Hill in Waterbury Center. Photo courtesy Kelley Hackett

Kelley Hackett runs a home child care in Waterbury Center where she said she now has her 2-5 year-old charges practicing bear drills.

“First rule is, we all need to stay together,” she said. “Then if one person sees a bear, they will say, ‘bear!’ and we'll all make a big loud ‘roar’ noise and calmly walk back into the house. So we've been practicing how to roar all at the same time.”

Hackett and her husband Cory have two dogs and they make sure at least one of the dogs is outside with them and the kids at all times. They don’t leave trash or bird feeders out, but they do have a bear-proof compost tumbler. The family also has free-ranging chickens which the bears so far have left alone.

What’s changed this year, Cory Hackett said, is seeing bears in the middle of the day instead of just seeing them on surveillance cameras at night.

“We started brushing the dogs near the compost area to try and leave their scent around,” he said. “The bear basically comes through once a week and stirs the compost tumbler for us.”

As for the car break-ins, no, the bears are not picking the locks. Barrett said the animals, who are highly intelligent, have learned to merely lift the door handles on unlocked cars.

“The bears smell something in the car,” he said. “Whether you have a bag of trash in there, or had a bag of trash in there because you just brought it down to the dump, or you left a Slim Jim that you were chewing on in the console between the seat for two minutes as you went in the house, or you left the diaper bag with baby food and threw it in the back seat for the night.”

“In three or four cases so far this year,” he continued, “I've had completely secured vehicles, all the windows shut, and the bears have come along and used their paws, opened the doors and gotten into the cars. In one case, it was trash, and in one case it was a food product that somebody left behind.”

The issue has been compounded by the fact that there is not much food in the forests early in the summertime. Early in the season, “they're literally starving,” Barrett said. Wild food sources aren’t abundant until late June or July, so when bears emerge from their dens in April and are hungry, that’s when they head for human development for an easy meal. If they’re successful in scoring a meal, they return. 

Barrett said bears make practical decisions to find food as easily as possible. 

“That's when we get home invasions and current invasions,” Barrett said. “The bear says, ‘Hey, I have to consume 4,000 to 5,000 calories a day, but I have to burn that to hike half of a mountain to find two blueberry patches and raspberry patch and an old apple orchard. Why don't I park myself 200 yards away from a condo complex where I can feed out of five dumpsters, one chicken coop, and three trash cans?”

The only way to turn the tide of bear vs. human incidents is deterrence, Barrett said. 

“Our recommendation now is if you know you've got to bear an area, or even if you've heard of a bear in your town, we recommend securing all ground floor windows as best you can, and locking your cars,” the warden said. Electric fencing is also an excellent deterrent to bears, especially around chicken coops and bees.

Shooting a nuisance bear is illegal, as one Waterbury resident discovered in July 2020.  

The man shot a male black bear after he found it rifling through his trash, and was fined $320 plus a $200 restitution fee for the bear. Vermont statute requires people to first “[attempt] reasonable nonlethal measures” when protecting livestock, pets, crops, beehives, occupied dwellings, and other humans.

Barrett is keen to get the public on board regarding bear deterrence so that the problem does not escalate further. “We try to do as much outreach as possible…because we don't want to have to dispatch or put down the bear.”

Killing a nuisance bear is a last resort, but Barrett said it happens when public safety is at risk. If a bear invades a home, it’s a game changer.

“If we get a bear that’s busted into somebody's home through a screen window or screen door, and it's actually gotten into the house, we're going to try to capture that bear. And then we're going to put that bear down because that's human safety at that point because he's going to do it again.”

Relocating nuisance bears isn’t an option in a small state like Vermont, Barrett said, as they will just wander to the nearest town, or go right back where they were. “Right now, it's basically the bears just want an easy meal and to get it wherever they can,” he said. “They don't want our dogs, and they don't want our children.”

A tip on human safety from the experts: If you encounter a bear in person, don’t run. Make noise, back away slowly, giving the bear an open path to escape. And if a bear gets into your home or outbuilding, leave doors open and exit the house. Do not approach the bear or try to make contact with the bear.

A bear cub crosses River Road in Duxbury on a recent evening. Photo by Gordon Miller

The Vermont Fish & Wildlife department website, vtfishandwildlife.com , has a detailed page regarding black bears and steps people can take to deter them from their property. The “Living with Bears” section also has a spot to report a bear sighting.

“We're in bear country now, so we have to act that way,” Barrett said. “A lot of people are – for lack of a better word – just 'bear-stupid' because they haven't had to deal with it before.”

Waterbury Roundabout is a volunteer collaboration between Waterbury residents and UVM student journalists from the Community News Service, part of UVM’s Reporting and Documentary Storytelling program in the Center for Research on Vermont. We provide local news coverage about and for Waterbury, VT.