Image courtesy of the Missouri Department of Conservation
There are bears in Missouri—black bears, the biggest carnivores in the state. They forage and den across the southern part of the state, usually staying south of Interstate 44—as though the highway had some significance for bruins—and moving as far northeast as St. Louis, reports the Missouri Department of Conservation. They eat berries and bark, ants and bees. Sometimes they sleep in trees. And that seems to be near the limit of what’s been known about the state’s bears since the mid–19th century, when they became scarce.
Now the MDC, in conjunction with the University of Missouri–Columbia and Mississippi State University, has embarked on a multiyear bear study. It got under way last summer, when several dozen black bears in southern Missouri were lured into traps by stale donuts. Thirteen adult bears were fitted with GPS-equipped radio collars. The study resumes this spring, when the bears stir. Scientists will track their movements, and gather their fur from snares baited with fish oil or anise oil. The data they collect will help them learn more about the number of bears in the state, as well as just which bears they are, on the basis of DNA analysis. Some are probably descended from bears that moved south from Minnesota and Manitoba to Arkansas in the 1960s and ’70s, but preliminary DNA analysis suggests that some have unique genotypes, which means they could be hardy bears whose ancestors somehow escaped human pressures—that is, true Missourians. And their numbers seem to be rebounding.
So what difference could the research make? The naturalist Aldo Leopold had a good line on that, says MDC’s Jeff Beringer, who heads the bear study: “He said the first line of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.”
