Natural History Wanderings

The BBC writes about how to deal with Bear encounters. Her are a few key excerpts:

They found that the attacks tended to be defensive: the bear was startled in a surprise encounter, and then attacked. A wider 2023 analysis of attacks by all large carnivores showed a similar pattern of largely defensive attacks by bear species (including American black bears, Asiatic black bears, brown bears, sloth bears and polar bears). Such insights into bear behaviour can be crucial when it comes to preventing conflicts, she and other experts say.

A main recommendations is to make sure the bear can hear you approaching. “If you telegraph your presence, and thereby avoid surprising them, they usually obligingly get out of the way, from this incoming potential interaction,” he says. “Making our presence known is the single most important thing we can do.”

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What to do when you see a bear