A feminine black bear has befuddled biologists by finishing an epic, 1,000-mile journey throughout the South and returning to the identical campsite the place she was captured from. After a number of interactions with people, Bear 609 was relocated from Great Smoky National Park to the South Cherokee National Forest in July. She allegedly stole a backpack from a fisherman two years in the past and was recognized to eat meals off picnic tables. Months after her relocation this summer time, the bear finally made her approach again to the nationwide park.
Biologists weren’t precisely floored that she returned to the campsite, which was solely about 50 miles from South Cherokee NF. What shocked them was the trail Bear 609 took to get there. Her collar knowledge and anecdotes from different communities revealed a route that took her by Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina earlier than returning to GSMNP.
After checking again in on the campground, 609 hit the highway once more. She journeyed all the way down to Alpharetta, Georgia, the place she was filmed at a shopping center earlier than surviving a automobile collision. She then walked again to the nationwide forest in Tennessee. Bear 609 will proceed sporting the GPS collar, and though NPS biologists haven’t acquired knowledge from the collar in a couple of weeks, they imagine she continues to be alive.
Bill Stiver, a GSMNP wildlife biologist, categorized the bear’s actions as “bizarre.”
“She never slowed down,” he advised WBIR. “She just kept on going.”
Bear 609 is part of a decades-long National Park Service examine in GSMNP on how bears reply to relocation. Wildlife biologists have found that some two-thirds of relocated bears don’t survive very lengthy after being transported and launched elsewhere.
“The outcome really isn’t that good,” Stiver defined to WBIR. “Some of the preliminary data is suggesting the majority of those bears are dying in some form or fashion within four months. Whether it’s vehicle collisions, additional conflict, hunter-killed, and things of that nature.”
609’s route is the longest recognized bear motion within the undertaking’s historical past, almost 5 instances the space of the earlier record-setting 215-mile motion captured in 2020. That bear was additionally moved from GSMNP to South Cherokee NF, and biologists nonetheless aren’t certain what to make of those lengthy journeys.
“Is it behaving like this because it was relocated…well hopefully this project will help answer that question,” Stiver stated. “When we move a bear, we like to think they live happily ever after. I suspect that is not the case.”