Key Terms
This is a species of medium-sized animal endemic to North America. They are omnivores and are the continent's smallest and most widely distributed species. They live in mountainous and forest regions throughout the Pacific Northwest, Canada, Alaska, the Rocky Mountains, the Midwest, the Appliation Mountains and Southern part of the US.
What is a black bear?
This is directly impacting black bears because it is changing the quality and the location of their habitats. They are moving higher in elevation and deeper into forests to find food and shelter.
What is Climate Change?
Warmer temperatures have led North American bears enter their dens later. For black bears, increases of just 1°C reduce hibernation by an average of six days.
How is climate change impacting the length of hibernation?
Fire can increase soil erosion which will dirty streams and change the PH in the water which could kill more species.
What can fire do to soil?
Creating prescribed burns to decrease the potential for out of control wild fires.
What can be done to minimize fires?
Most commonly defined as the degree to which the landscape facilitates or impedes movement among resource patches.vi Can be important for maintaining ecological, population-level, or evolutionary processes.
What is Connectivity?
This is when CO2 and other greenhouse gases trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, and the planet’s temperature increases, which causes climate change.
What is global warming?
Black bears are heading into their dens by two weeks later year and leaving their dens in early March.
How is global warming impacting the timing of hibernation?
Wildfires burn down the trees that black bears often use for their dens such as the mountain hem walk.
What causes black bears to lose their dens?
Limit access to black bear habitats with alterain vehicles and other motorized vehicles.
What can be done to allow black bears access to valleys and remote areas between habitats?
Refers to a group of landscape metrics that rank the importance of habitat patches or linkages in providing movement across an entire network, i.e., as “gatekeepers” of flow across a landscape.
What is Centrality?
Black bear's habitats have a lot of this which means where they live interacts with each other. They are becoming less this way because of changes to their habitats.
How does climate change effect black bear habitat connectivity?
Warm weather is causing them to come out earlier and they don't have any food yet so this is causing them to have contact with humans. They will start looking for dog food, bird seeds, and human foods.
What is the impact on humans when black bears come out of hibernation earlier?
The plants and vegetation black bears eat are burnt away so they don’t have any food sources.
What do fires do to black bear's food sources?
Make sure that black bears have the ability to disperse into cooler, higher-elevation habitats as the climate warms.
What can be done to help black bears hibernate for longer as their habitats become increasingly hot and dry?
The ability of a landscape to support movement of plants, animals, or processes.
What is Permeability?
As the earth heats up and the climate changes there are more droughts, stronger hurricanes, and changing ocean patterns that impact the way that black bears live.
How is climate change impacting black bears?
Black bears are going into human areas more, they are becoming more accumulated to being around human households which will lead to more bears being seen as problem bears and either relocated or euthanized.
What is the outcome for black bears with more human interaction?
The conditions that are dry could decrease the amount and quality of habitats and forests. The longer the fire season is the parts that are burned can affect the habitat. The lack of moisture can lead to bark beetle outbreaks and the death of many trees creating dry flammable materials.
What is the impact of drought conditions on black bear's habitats?
Decrease admissions of CO2 though conversations, policy change, and environmentally supportive practices.
What can people do to change the path of climate change which is impacting black bears?
Water temperatures warm enough to prevent migration of a given fish species. These can prevent or delay spawning for migrating salmonids.
What are Thermal Barriers?
Black bears across are going hungry and losing their habitats as extreme heat and drought decrease their food supply.
What are some of the impacts that global warming is having on black bears?
It has been hypothesized that North American black bear hibernation could decline by 15 to 39 days.
What is the outlook for black bear hibernation due to climate change by 2050?
Wildfires can limit black bear's habitats and food supplies which can push them further in human territories and into human contact. Fires will force bears out of their typical range and into areas that are not optional habitat for them. Due to the potential decrease in food supplies black bears will be more at risk of dying of starvation, accidents and due to fatal interactions with human beings.
What are the possible outcomes due to limits put on black bear habitats by fires?
Do not overbuild in black bear habitats, limit water usage and building dams, limit highways and roads through bear habitats.
What can humans do to keep a distance between them and wild black bears, to protect them and their habitats?