Arkansans might be able to hunt bears in more areas when the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission completes its new bear management plan.
Myron Means, the AGFC's bear biologist, briefed the commission about the new bear management plan at its monthly work meeting in July. Much has changed since the AGFC adopted the current bear management plan more than a decade ago, Means said. Population monitoring techniques have improved, and more bears are inventoried, or sampled. Bears have exceeded their social carrying capacity in some areas to the extent that the AGFC allowed hunters to kill bears over bait in 2001.
The bear population didn't suffer. Instead, bears have flourished and expanded.
"People wanted to see bears, and they wanted to be able to hunt them when sustainable populations were established," Means said.
Huntable populations might well be established in portions of the Gulf Coastal Plain and in southwest Arkansas where bears seasons are closed, Means said. The White River bear study is complete, and the repatriation of bears into the Felsenthal National Wildlife Refuge is complete.
Bears have so thoroughly saturated their habitat in the Ozarks and Ouachitas that they have colonized portions of Oklahoma and Missouri. In fact, Oklahoma has a bear hunting season now. In 2000, when I left Oklahoma, bear hunting seemed like a distant possibility, with a wide gulf to probability.
The new plan, Means said, will maintain current bear populations in bear management zones 1 (Ozarks), 2 (Ouachitas), 5 and 5A (White River NWR).
"We'll maintain our monitoring protocols for those zones, and we'll increase monitoring efforts in bear management zones 3 and 4 to determine distribution and abundance," Means said.
Zone 3 is the Little River and Red River watersheds north of Interstate 30 to the Ouachita foothills. Zone 4 is the Gulf Coastal Plain, with essentially the same boundaries as deer management zone 12.
"We'll establish management strategies for bear zones 3 and 4 once evidence of sustainable populations exists," Means said. "Once monitoring is in place and we see a sustainable reproduction rate, we will begin to have bear hunting in the Gulf Coastal Plain. We're not in a preservationist mode with bears. We're in a conservationist mode, as we always have been."
Members of my hunting club have seen bears, and evidence of bears, on our lease in Grant County. Bears might well have inflicted damage to some of my equipment that I attributed to vandalism.
Means said reports of bear sightings are increasing throughout the Gulf Coastal Plain. If they are males, they are probably young boars that have been displaced by dominant boars and are looking for their own territory to colonize. If sows with cubs are present, Means said, it's a pretty good indication that a breeding population is established.
"A guy in Ashley County sent me pictures of five different bears," Means said. "Some were really big males, but there were some that very possibly could have been adult females."
Anywhere along major waterways is prime territory.
"The Saline, Ouachita and Bayou Bartholomew drainages are travel routes and focal points for populations as they travel through, homestead and disperse," Means said. "The trick is to determine habitat quality."
The piney woods of Bradley, Union and Dallas counties are "submarginal" bear habitat at best, Means said, but different dynamics are in play than in other places. Hunters on leased land in that region are likely feeding bears unknowingly with corn and other goodies intended for deer.
"There are documented studies all over the country that talk about supplemental feeding. Dumps, corn feeders and stuff like that," Means said. "All those things combined can turn submarginal habitat into marginal habitat where bears can live."
Because the food supply in south Arkansas is so variable, Means said hunting regulations will have to be very conservative.
"If every bear in that part of the country is at feeders, you can substantially impact that population," Means said. "We don't want to wipe them out."
However, Means is confident that a bear season will eventually come to south Arkansas.
"Probably within the next few years we'll be looking at a bear hunt in the Gulf Coastal Plain," Means said. "No doubt we have bears there. We just need to get a better idea of what we have."
Sports on 08/07/2014