Beary Dependent on Your Picking… or Not Picking

Illustrated by Sarah Pullen

Just like you, bears love berries and depend on them for 90% of their food during the summer, eating up to 200,000 a day! They are efficient foragers, only showing up when they know the berries are ripe and travelling huge distances to find enough to eat.

Berries contain antioxidants, vitamins, and carbohydrates. Although cancer occurs in captive bears, it has never been reported in wild bears.

The seeds pass through the digestive tract unbroken and able to germinate, making bears important seed dispersers.

Bears do not want conflict with people but if they can’t find enough food in the wild, they will come into town and look for human related food like fruit trees and garbage. 

Did you know...
They gather berries quickly, using their sensitive, mobile lips and swallowing them whole. The berries enter a two-part stomach, which grinds the pulp off the seeds. In 2021 31 bears were  destroyed because they started to depend on us for food.

What can you do?
Only pick berries that you and your family will eat, leave some for the bears. Remember we have a lot to eat and the bears really need the berries.

Put your garbage in a safe place and don’t take it out until the morning of removal!​