Bears in Glen Haven!

By Jane Greiner
Sun contributor
There is hard evidence that a bear recently walked across the beach not far from the Cannery in Glen Haven. Two visitors came upon the tracks and thinking they were perhaps cougar prints, the man made plaster casts of the imprints. He took them to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Visitor Center and brought them to the attention of Ranger Ken Hyde, the National Park’s biologist.
Hyde went back to the cannery with the visitors, found more paw prints, and identified them as bear prints, not those of cougars. He then traced back the bear’s trail.

Hyde said the bear had “come all the way down to the water and then gone back over the the fore dune. He had come clear to the water, about 50 yards north or up from the Cannery, and that’s where the visitors found (the first tracks).”
“We tracked it up into the terrace between the woods and the fore dune, and he had walked all around back there,” Hyde said. This was about 100 yards east of Glen Haven.
The ranger managed to find enough good prints to make two good plaster casts — a front and a back foot. His casts clearly show the five toes with claws and the different shape of the round front paw and the elongated, human-like, back foot.
Hyde is from the state of Washington where he was familiar with both black and grizzly bears and believes that the prints he saw were definitely those of a bear.
“So we let the campground know that people should take care of their food, putting it away. Keep food in the trunk, including coolers.”
What should people do to protect themselves from bears? “Make some noise while you are hiking,” Hyde advised, and if you come across one “don’t run away from a bear. Make lots of noise so he figures out you are a human. He may not be able to tell what you are, especially if you are downwind from him.”
“We haven’t had any cub sighting — that’s when we’d start to get a little more worried,” he added.
“Birdfeeders, food coolers and garbage are the three things that draw them in. Try to watch those because when you get the bears acclimated, that’s when you start to get problems.”
In closing, Hyde said, “But thank the public for reporting those wildlife sightings.”
He said they have had several calls on the piebald deer, some on unusual snakes and turtles crossing the roads. “We are always interested, sometimes a call allows us to go help the animal off the road.”