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Human-Bear Coexistence
Project Overview
In the Methow Valley, hotter summers, bigger wildfires, and more development are bringing black bears and people into contact more often. Natural foods like wild berries are changing with the climate, and bears are turning to human areas for food.
As part of a larger effort to help our community live safely with bears, we have been collecting data on the occurrence of five fruiting shrubs that bears eat: serviceberry, chokecherry, currant, elderberry, and dogwood. By monitoring the trends of each shrub over time and comparing them to the amount of human-bear conflict in the community, we can better understand how to coexist with bears in a changing climate.
Help Make the Methow Bear Aware
Human-bear coexistence is a community effort. Here are some ways you can help:
Where this work is happening
We are sampling 37 randomly selected cells, roughly the size of an average female black bear's home range, throughout the Methow Valley Watershed using a combination of camera traps, field surveys, and remotely sensed data.
How community scientists are helping
From monitoring natural food availability along transects, to sorting camera trap images and identifying seeds found in bear scats, we couldn't do this work with out our community science volunteers!
What we are doing to foster coexistence
Our research supports the Methow Bear Coalition, a collaborative effort to improve human-bear coexistence through education, outreach, and programs to help mitigate conflict in our community.
Methow Valley Community Bear Assessment
Published in 2024, the Methow Valley Community Bear Assessment identifies areas of current and potential human-bear conflict within the Methow Valley, WA, and outlines next steps for human-bear coexistence. Read the full Assessment here.
2024 Natural Food Survey Findings
In 2024, 37 community science volunteers collected data on 5 species of fruiting shrub species across the Methow watershed. They surveyed 37 transects, performed trail camera maintenance, and collected bear scats for compositional analysis.
Below are our synthesized findings on the abundance, crop success, and phenology of serviceberry, chokecherry, elderberry, currant, and dogwood across all transects.
The average species abundance across all of the transects in 2024 is quite similar to 2023's graph, as we would expect from surveying many of the same transects.
Community science volunteers surveyed an additional 7 transects for a total of 37 transects this year. While these additional transects somewhat shifted the average species abundance, serviceberry remained the most abundant species by far.
Crop success was OK this year. Serviceberry, the most abundant species we survey, had a high crop success, although many community scientists remarked on the berries becoming dried out as they ripened. Chokecherry and currant did not have many highly productive plants, while elderberry and dogwood showed a good amount of high and medium productivity plants.
Crop phenology for 2024 was similar to 2023, with serviceberry being one of the first ripening crops. This year currant ripened early as well, peaking in early July compared to August in 2023. Elderberry continued to be the latest ripening crop, providing peak berries in September.
Data from our trail cameras will be analyzed after multiple years of photos to better understand how bears are occupying the landscape and what characteristics of a landscape are important to them (eg. berry abundance, forest density, proximity to human development). Collected bear scats are being analyzed by a student at Colorado State University, and results will be available in spring 2025.
Thank you so much to all of our volunteers! We could not collect this data without their time and effort.
2023 Findings
2022 Pilot Findings
Thank you to our project partners!
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