‘Bear Aware’ with Hardware Wildlife Education Center

Sunny skies and rising temperatures aren’t only drawing humans out of hibernation for the winter but black bears too. To educate locals on how to stay safe while camping and hiking in Utah’s awakening bear country, the Hardware Wildlife Education Center created an interactive bear safety exhibit named “Bear Aware.”

Utah is roughly 80% bear country, and with black bear sightings on the rise in Cache Valley, it is important for the center to inform locals on what to do to avoid an encounter.

This exhibit is open for three weekends in April and teaches attendees a range of skills including how to tell the difference between brown and black bears, how to tell if a bear is nearby and how to set up a bear-safe campsite. 

According to Barbara Tew, information specialist for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources and assistant manager for the center, the average hiker or camper may not know enough about bear safety to safely explore Utah’s vast bear country. 

“People are not storing their food correctly, and that brings the bears down,” Tew said. “They need to keep those smells out of their campgrounds, and they are not doing that.”

Black bears have a sense of smell much stronger than a human, allowing them to pick up on scents from roughly two miles away. Once they find food at a home or campground, they will likely return in hopes of finding another easy meal. According to Tew, all it takes is a whiff of food, beer, fish or even soap to attract a hungry black bear.   

“We usually say, ‘A fed bear is a dead bear’ because if they eat your food, they’re going to come to you again,” Tew said. “When a bear gets accustomed to people and finds their garbage and goes, ‘Oh, I like people, and I smell people — I’m going to go find them,’ that’s when we have to move them.” 

Bears returning to homes and campsites in search of food can become dangerous, so the DWR uses bear traps to capture and relocate them back to their habitats. The center includes a bear trap in the exhibit to show attendees how scents are used to lure the bears inside. 

Though black bears are omnivores, only 10% of their diet includes protein, and the remaining 90% consists of plants and berries. 

“Bears have to eat 20,000 calories a day to put on all the fat that they have,” Tew said. “They’re not getting a lot of calories, so they have to eat all the time.” 

The exhibit includes an interactive campsite set-up, allowing locals to examine the sleeping, garbage and meal areas to determine which parts were bear-safe and which parts were not.

“You should have a 100-foot triangle between you, your trash and your meal area,” Tew said. 

Attendees use note cards to label each part of the campsite as examples of good or bad bear safety. For example, clean dishes are an example of good bear safety. Leaving food or fragranced soaps in the tent is an example of bad bear safety.

The exhibit also includes bear and animal hides, a bear den reading corner, a bear craft and a variety of hidden bear jokes for attendees to find and answer. The interactive elements make it a perfect educational stop for families and children, including Michaela Meats and her five kids.

Michaela Meats observing the “Bear Aware” safety exhibit at Hardware Wildlife Education Center on April 4.

“We’re learning about bears for when we go camping this summer because there’s an increase in bear population and sightings,” Meats said. 

According to Tew, the bear population in Cache Valley increased around two years ago during a heavy winter that led to a decline in the deer population. This increase is expected to result in greater black bear sightings this year as the cubs leave their mothers and go out looking for their own food sources. 

“It is really educational for kids,” Meats said. 

According to Meats, exposing her kids to bear safety information through an interactive, hands-on method like the exhibit made the learning process more fun and digestible for them.

“I can tell them to stay away from things, but sometimes, they don’t always listen to what I say,” Meats said.

Tew said the reason bear sightings have been on the rise recently in Cache Valley is largely because of human encroachment and activity. 

“People go further now. They live further out now,” Tew said. “They need to stay on the trails — stay on the roads.”

Practicing bear safety isn’t only about keeping hikers and campers safe but also keeping the bears safe as well. Bears too dangerous to be safely relocated from camping or hiking trails may face being hunted and killed. 

“We love our bears — we love all of our wildlife — and we don’t want to have to kill them,” Tew said. “If you are unsafe and you get that bear habituated to humans, then we have to kill them because they become dangerous.”

According to Tew, one is far more likely to avoid an interaction with a black bear in the Utah wilderness if they keep these tips in mind. 

“The average threat is not bad as long as you’re doing the right things,” Tew said. “You’re not carrying a lot of food, you don’t smell good, you’re not wearing deodorant and if you are, you’re wearing unscented deodorant — those kinds of things are things you need to be thinking of in bear country.”