Electric fence will keep bears, people on separate trails

As the city is learning, education and garbage awareness can only take you so far when you are dealing with tens of thousands of people living and recreating on the edge of Anchorage's "Big Wild Life." There are a couple more things the Municipality should consider.

First, bears react favorably when humans are predictable in their movements, as has been shown in tightly controlled bear viewing locations. As long as the people stay in their territory the bears seem mostly happy to stay in theirs. Certainly with Anchorage's love for bears, we have the manpower and will to move our trails away from salmon streams and a few other natural bear travel corridors.

Bears will walk down the creeks looking for salmon. This brings us to my second idea, which is to use solar, or battery powered, electric fences erected across salmon streams at or near where the streams enter human-occupied habitat. Fences would extend variable distances to either side of a stream to prevent circling.

Bears are unusually perceptive animals, and electric fences seem especially effective at turning them around. They display keen memories for experiences, both good and bad. In cases where it may be difficult to separate people from high-use bear habitat, an electric fence could do the work.

This isn't just speculation. I've used electric fences for more than 40 years to control domestic goats and horses, and in recent years my family has used one to protect our cabin in the heart of the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge. In the fall we have deer and mountain goat meat hanging -- food that younger bears and females with cubs can hardly resist -- yet no bears have crossed the fence.

Electric fencing is -- relatively speaking -- cheap to buy and maintain. Signs at each location could educate the public, and while touching a hot fence is definitely unpleasant, they aren't dangerous to people.

Apart from preventing bears from following salmon creeks into the city proper, the fences would act as training devices -- a line between the wild and the city -- that I believe bears will respect. Healthy salmon runs could then provide the public and the bears with something we both crave. It might even be possible to develop a bear viewing program in the future.

Finally, while the grizzly is the more dangerous animal, it would be a mistake to think you can mingle large numbers of people with many free-roaming black bears and not have something happen. The black bear is different from the grizzly in several important ways. They generally will not defend their cubs from man (something that causes the majority of grizzly attacks) and they are opportunists that in rare instances kill and eat people. I actually believe this idea enters their head fairly often, but most black bears are easily intimidated, and their victims are usually small-statured, or children.

Grizzly populations are capable of self-regulation through infanticide inflicted by large dominant males, but black bear populations aren't. I believe the city would be well served by allowing limited black bear hunting on wilder areas of the municipality adjacent to human habitation, like the Hillside.

Perhaps the military could be persuaded to allow black bear hunts on their adjacent lands. Done properly, hunting would make the city's black bears warier of people and also relieve population pressures on the bears themselves without changing things to the point you stopped seeing black bears altogether.

While bears are the coolest of animals, they will exploit us if they can, and familiarity can lead to contempt -- on both sides. There are no guarantees here, but with careful planning we may be able to maintain good populations of both black bears and grizzlies at the edge of our big wild city.

Big game guide Karl Braendel was born in Anchorage 61 years ago and now lives in Chickaloon.