Residents in Mud Bay are reporting bear damage to dozens of homes, cabins and outbuildings over the past few months.
The culprit, or culprits, seems to be a bear that may have learned to break in when people are not around.
“I don’t think there’s been a single place that was actually occupied at the time that bear broke in,” resident Eric Holle said.
He and others said they believe the break-ins can all be attributed to the same bear and that it’s a cautious animal.
“If it thinks people are around, it seems to avoid breaking down the door,” Holle said.
Holle said he became aware of the bear break-ins in July when it broke into a neighbor’s cabin. He said he and his wife are generally at their cabin in the summer. But when they left for two weeks in October, they put an electric fence around the house and garden and an unwelcome mat out with drywall screws sticking up.
“I also left a radio playing and … made sure there was adequate human scent around,” he said. When pressed for further details, Holle laughed and said that’s done by urinating around the property.
Holle called this year unusual.
“There have been isolated incidents every now and then, but this has been fairly continuous and presumably it’s the same animal,” he said. “You can almost track its movements by finding out whose place was broken into most recently.”
Many residents in the area have been doing just that via an email chain – essentially a neighborhood bear group – managed by Patty Kermoian.
Kermoian shied away from sharing too many details about the people who reported to her that they’d seen or experienced break-ins, particularly because some do not want it to be widely known that they are not living full-time on their properties. But, she and her husband, Kip, spent a lot of time trying to get people to secure attractants, cleaning up after break-ins, and keeping an eye on Mud Bay.
“We’d find these break-ins and try to get a hold of the neighbors,” she said. “We were successful in getting some people to do electric fences, even people who were off the grid.”
Kermoian has lived in the area for more than 40 years. She and Kip built their current house about 33 years ago. And, while there have been break-ins in the past, she said this summer’s bear activity has been highly unusual. Further, photos of the apparent culprit show a round, well-fed bear. It does not appear to be starving.
“My first thought that came to mind is that, we don’t know exactly how old this bear is, but I heard the wildlife biologist guessing that it may be a 4-year-old. Which puts us back into 2020,” she said.
Kermoian speculated that the bear could have learned that year how to break into people’s cars and homes to look for food.
“It’s really hard to say. But it’s a bear with a problem now,” she said. “It’s a bad behavior bear now. He’s learned.”
There are other sources of food. Holle said he often sees bears rooting around in seaweed that’s washed up.
“I think they get a lot of invertebrates, maybe small crabs and things like that. But, they also eat a lot of plant food particularly in the spring. They’ll eat cow parsnip, grasses, sedges, especially when they’ve come out of hibernation. There are also moose and deer and I’m sure there have been a few moose calves taken by brown bears in the area,” he said.
Both Holle and Kermoian said it’s not clear if the bear is only breaking into cabins for food. When Holle went into his neighbors’ cabin, he said he expected to see a lot of food containers broken open.
“In fact, there was a lot of uneaten food. Stuff was strewn all over the floor. It left meat sticks, a jar of honey, a can of maple syrup. Things that typically would interest a bear, it didn’t touch them. It made me wonder if food was not the primary focus,” he said.
Kermoian said she’s not sure what an ideal resolution would be in this situation.
“I think it probably needs to be killed. It’s not going to unlearn that behavior,” she said. “I’m not one for killing bears at all, but I think it would be nice to see someone in authority be more protective.”
She said she has had a hard time getting officials to be responsive, “It’s pretty frustrating.”
Multiple residents said they had contacted Fish and Game and a wildlife trooper, Colin Nemec, who has relocated from Haines to Juneau.
Nemec said typically when people call him, he tells them about the rules around killing a bear through defense of life and property rules, but he also said it is both their right and their responsibility to defend their property from damage.
“We generally don’t respond to these types of calls anywhere in the Haines Borough,” he said. “Unless someone’s life is in immediate danger, or there is an articulable exigent circumstance we won’t respond to a scene.”
An articulable exigent circumstance allows law enforcement to enter a property without a warrant.
Fish and Game Area Management Biologist Carl Koch said his office in Juneau has gotten reports of bear break-ins on numerous cabins but it has been hard to confirm exactly how many because the reports are coming from many people.
Koch said Fish and Game believes any bears involved need to be killed. But, it is a challenging situation.
“The bear targets unoccupied cabins and the owners often end up finding out when they return, or their neighbors discover it days or in a few instances, perhaps weeks later. In many cases the cabinets were off-grid at locations that needed to be hiked to, although several have also been on the Mud Bay road system,” he said. “The bear doesn’t appear to use any consistent pattern, and all the game camera photos and evidence so far leads us to conclude it only comes at night and [if it’s all the same bear] it may be a brown bear.”
He said Fish and Game’s policy to get the correct bear when they decide one needs to be put down.
“In this case, that is very difficult to do when it’s never caught in the act, operates under stealth of night, and in an area where there is no regular law enforcement,” he said.
Koch said the last confirmed sighting of the bear that Fish and Game has seen was Oct. 29.
“It’s possible that this bear will hibernate very soon if it hasn’t already,” he said. “We do want residents to continue to tell us when new damage is found especially if they can confirm the exact date and location.”
Koch said there is another bear in town that Fish and Game has told Haines police it would support being killed.
That one was seen opening car doors, pulling door handles off and causing damage in the Mud Bay Road area before it was spotted downtown, hobbling because of a rear leg injury that makes it easy to identify.