Great Smoky Mountains National Park wildlife biologist Bill Stiver said bear management and education of the public must take place in order to decrease harmful bear and human encounters.

Stiver said the bear population in the park has certainly been on the rise over the last 25 years, and combined with the nine or 10 million visitors to the Smokies each year, bear and human encounters have been occurring more frequently.

"In the late 70s and 80s and even the early 90s, the estimates were 400 to 600 bears in the park. And the population has grown, so our current, most recent estimates are 1,500 bears," Stiver said. "So just by probability alone, nine million people, 1,500 bears, you have a lot of encounters."

Stiver attributes much of the issue of bear encounters to food and garbage not being handled properly by visitors to the park.

"Bears are constantly looking for food," Stiver said. "If they can't find natural food, then some bears may resort to garbage or people's food or things like that. Our big job is to try to maintain that wild behavior, that fear of people and feeding on natural food - minimize human-bear encounters as best we can."

Keeping wild bears wild is an important task for the park rangers and wildlife biologists at the park, as is teaching the public how to act around the wild animals that inhabit the national park.

"Let's say you have nine, ten million people, and let's say that 90 percent of people know what to do. We still have a million people who don't," Stiver said. "So the problem is, it doesn't take many people to start a problem. If a couple people in a campground leave their food outside and a bear wanders in the night and gets their food, then the process has started."

Stiver said in recent years, human encounters with bears have been on the rise. These encounters do not usually encompass more than a bear wandering into a campground or a simple bear sighting by a visitor to the park.

He said the number of bear encounters for the last three years have been around 250 each year. For 2008, the number was probably closer to 400. Stiver said the increase in encounters might be due to an issue with the bear population.

"The bear population, it goes through cycles, just like every population," Stiver said. "In 1997, we had a mass failure, a food shortage, and a lot of bears left the park, a lot of them were killed during the hunting season or on the roads by vehicles."

Stiver emphasized the fact that even if there are fewer bears, problems definitely still occur without proper management of the bears. He said although the bear population has grown, wildlife biologists in the park have not been handling the bears more.

"When we handle a bear, it means that the bear is doing some kind of nuisance behavior that requires us to handle it," Stiver said. "Like it may be showing up in a campground, and we need to go out and deal with it. Literally put our hands on it."

Many bears that become nuisances to park visitors never even have to be moved, Stiver said. Often the bear will be caught, tranquilized, measured and tagged before being released in the same area.

"Sometimes we just capture bears as a form of aversive conditioning," Stiver said. "It's enough of a negative experience that they don't want to come back."

He said the main goal of this conditioning is to get the bear to associate people and the area they are in with something negative instead of something positive like food or garbage. This proactive approach is a change from how rangers used to deal with bears in the park.

"We try to deal with things like food and garbage, closing campsites, posting warning signs, changing work schedules, things like that," Stiver said. "So the focus is more on the problem, that being the food and garbage, and managing people, and then to some degree we still have to manage bears."

Even though the number of bears in the park is increasing, the actual number of bears being moved is decreasing because while it alleviates the problem at that spot at that moment, it's not necessarily the best thing for the bear, Stiver said.

"We know that when bears are moved, a lot of times they try to come back and are hit by cars. They may cause problems in other places, they be taken during the hunting season, things like that," Stiver said. "If you want to do what's best for the bear, you try to keep the bear wild, keep it afraid of people and that way it doesn't get into trouble."

"We know that when bears are moved, a lot of times they try to come back and are hit by cars. They may cause problems in other places, they may be taken during the hunting season, things like that," Stiver said. "If you want to do what's best for the bear, you try keep the bear wild, keep it afraid of people and that way it doesn't get into trouble."

The increase in proactive measures by park rangers and biologists began in the 1960s, but didn't see real results until the 1990s, Stiver said. He admits the changes in policies and procedures took time to take effect and make a difference in the park.

"It took a while to really realize that giving the number of people we have in this park and the volume of garbage that is created by nine million people, a little 32-gallon trash can that only has a bear proof lid, is not really functional," Stiver said.  "And that's one of the big changes that occurred in the early 1990s is we changed over to dumpsters, a container that could handle the volume of trash that's being generated. That was a big step in bear management."

For those who may encounter a bear in the national park, there are several guidelines for people to follow in order to keep themselves and the animals safe.

"Most of the time, people aren't even going to know that a bear is close by. They're going to come walking along the trail and the bear's going to hear them, it's going to run and take off," Stiver said. "But certainly there are times when a bear may show up, and of course, the first thing you don't want to do is panic."

Stiver said the most important thing for people who encounter a bear to know is not to approach the bear. He said people getting out of their cars and approaching a bear is a big problem in the park.

"We're really trying to get people to understand that you don't have to be right underneath it, ten feet away to get a good picture," Stiver said. "It should be a really exciting, unique experience, it should be something that is done at a distance."

According to Stiver, if one comes in contact with a bear, it's important not to run away, but to stay standing and try to scare the bear away by making noise and waving at the animal.

"Basically if a bear is bluff charging you, or squatting or growling, it's telling you that you're too close," Stiver said. "It's telling you that; you just have to be able to interpret. The key is not getting too close."

The park service is trying to encourage people not to approach bears, and a law has been enacted that makes it illegal to purposely approach within 50 yards of a bear. "It's safe for the people and safe for the bear," Stiver said.

While most encounters with bears result in nothing more than a scare, some do unfortunately end in more serious and sometimes fatal results. Stiver accounts some of this to misinformation people have about bears.

"And if a black bear truly attacks you, let's say you have food and you separate yourself from your food and it physically attacks you, then the best thing to do is fight back."
Bill Stiver, wildlife biologist

"I think that the first thing people think is play dead, and that's not appropriate. It's a black bear," Stiver said. "And if a black bear truly attacks you, let's say you have food and you separate yourself from your food and it physically attacks you, then the best thing to do is fight back."

Stiver said a black bear differs from a brown bear in this respect because if a black bear attacks, they are treating the victim as prey, with the intent to kill and eat. Fighting the bear off is the only option for surviving an attack.

"Bears can certainly be dangerous. People need to know what to do when they come here, how to behave and certainly not approaching the bears, taking care of their food garbage, all of that stuff," Stiver said. "But certainly there are a lot of dangers in this park besides just bears - falling off cliffs, bee stings, having an allergic reaction to bee stings, hypothermia - it can be a dangerous place."