Arkansas reclaims its status as the Bear State

OZARK NATIONAL FOREST, Ark. -- The bear cub remained unseen among the barren trees and dried leaves blanketing the forest floor, but she could be heard.

Heavy wheezes like those of a child with asthma grew louder as a pair of state wildlife officials drew closer to the small bluff. In the shadow of a rock outcropping, the coat of a black bear shone slightly in the gray light of the morning.

Myron Means, a bear biologist with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, loaded a large tranquilizer dart into an air rifle — after attaching a pink fabric tail so he could later find the injection site. He took aim at the nursing mother bear, who only stared back as he pulled the trigger.

Slowly, the drugs from the pink boutonniere took effect and the mother drifted into unconsciousness, allowing the wildlife officials to place a radio collar around her neck and pull away her still-suckling cub.

Such examinations are performed all winter at dens throughout Arkansas' Ouachita and Ozark mountains — where less than a century ago black bears were nearly killed off. In the 1950s, state officials launched a novel program capturing bears in Minnesota and Manitoba in baited 50-gallon drum traps and driving them by pickup to Arkansas.

Now, more than 4,000 black bears roam the region and hunting, which nearly brought the bears' demise, once again takes place in what was known as the Bear State.

"We have brought back the bear," Means said.

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When Arkansas existed only as a territory, newspaper accounts sold hunters and thrill-seekers on the idea of coming to the region for hunting. The prairies of east Arkansas filled each winter with ducks while deer remained plentiful in the woods. But black bears — Ursus americanus to scientists — captured the imagination of many in tales describing Arkansas as a rugged wilderness.

"There was this mystique about the big, black bears that lived in Arkansas," said Kimberly Smith, a professor at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and a former ex-officio Game and Fish Commission member.

By the Civil War, Arkansas was known as the Bear State, though legislators never accepted it as an official slogan. Permanent rail lines arrived in the mid-1800s and, on them, many hunters unconcerned about the number of bears they killed.

The hunting, coupled with timber clearing, drained the state's bear population. By 1928, the state's newly formed Game and Fish Commission reported that only 25 bears remained in the state. The commission banned bear hunts, though it also acknowledged there were questions about whether the bear had a place in a modern Arkansas.

"As a general rule the average person believes in killing a bear on sight, and, if one is not easily sighted, there is strong inclination to get the dogs and chase him down," a 1928 report by the commission reads. "When brought in court for ending the life of a bear the killer usually proves that the animal was destroying crops, poultry or livestock for him and thus creates a knotty problem for the judge or jury."

Still, the commission hoped the black bear would "grow in popularity and his protection (would) become assured from the public sentiment standpoint." But even with bear hunting outlawed, the black bear population numbered only 50 heading into the 1950s.

In 1958, Game and Fish officials agreed to swap Arkansas bass and wild turkeys for bears from Minnesota and Manitoba. Trappers welded two 55-gallon drums together and baited them with fish, fruit and even bacon grease.

Once trapped, commission employees in pickups drove the caged animals to Arkansas, releasing them into the wild. Much of their plan came from guesswork, not scientific rigor. For instance, commission workers released almost all male bears into the mountains for the first five years of the program.

"They weren't keeping track of what they were doing," Smith said. But "by the time they brought the females five years later, these bears were in the prime of their reproductive potential and they had all established terrorities. It sounds funny, but it actually worked out really well."

Also helping the re-introduction: no one outside the agency knew about it. The Game and Fish Commission, under a constitutional amendment voters passed in 1944, operates as an independent organization from state government. While local newspapers in Minnesota wrote about the bear captures, Smith said residents in Arkansas heard nothing about it.

"It was done totally in secret," he said.

Under that cover, the state's bear population exploded. In 1973, state biologists estimated as many as 700 bears roamed in the state's mountains. By that point though, the commission ended its restocking efforts as angry homeowners wrote letters to newspapers, questioning where the bears in the yards of the rural homes came from, Smith said.

Even then, the number of bears continued to grow, helped by the vast, empty mountain habitat and sparse human population of western Arkansas.

"I think it was maybe a little bit of luck, but it was mostly habitat and numbers," said Joe Clark, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey at the University of Tennessee. "The habitat was good and the size of the area was really big, and so bears could afford to roam after they were reintroduced, whereas in other places, they might roam and get hit by cars or get into trouble with farmers."

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In the Ozark National Forest north of Dover, Means and another man dragged out the slumbering 195-pound mother bear. Means placed bandages over the bear's eyes to keep out dirt, though the bear's tongue grew dirty from lapping out at the ground.

Means wiped green ink inside the bear's mouth, punching a serial-number tattoo into her lip. The number, F212, matches those on tags pushed into her ears. He used a screwdriver-like tool to dig out a small tooth from bear's mouth. The teeth grow rings like trees, making it easy to estimate a bear's age.

Nearby, a woman on the trip comforted the bear's cub, which screeched at times when pulled away from her shoulder. The bear's long claws dug into her pink hooded sweat shirt.

A squirrel hunter stumbled across the bears' den a few weeks earlier, a rare occurrence, Means said. Typically, black bears shy away from human contact and only become aggressive when they associate a person with food, he said.

The Game and Fish Commission has allowed bear hunts in the state since 1980. Those hunts help winnow the population and keep the animals from expanding their territory into neighborhoods, Clark said.

The hunts also do something else.

"If people won't tolerate them, they won't be there for long. That's why they were gone to start with," Clark said. "If we can manage them so that they have value to the human occupants that they have to share the habitat with, it's a plus, I think, to the bears. I think the hunting is a good tool to enable us to give them that kind of value."

After 50 years, Arkansas' experiment has spread beyond its borders. Missouri wildlife officials say hikers and campers are seeing more black bears. In Oklahoma, state lawmakers passed a bill this year to allow hunters to kill black bears roaming in the eastern part of the state, where some say the animals have become a nuisance.

But in the Ozarks, Means and the squirrel hunter slid the mother bear back into her den. Means placed the bear cub against its mother, the baby reaching out. In a few moments, the cub found her mother's teat and drew from it again, sounding like a car engine that won't turn over.

The biologists left the bear there, hidden under rock, to wait for warmer days.

"She's just going to sit in there and mind her own business and expect you to walk right by her," Means said. "You could literally walk right over the front of a bear den and never realize you were there."

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