Acadia National Park has drawn visitors for more than 100 years who come to enjoy the rocky shorelines and cool summer breezes.
Local residents have mostly grown to accept the presence of millions of tourists who descend on MDI each summer and fall, but in the past couple of years a different kind of visitor has become more evident — and is getting more attention.
Black bears once were considered an unusual sight on MDI, but now are being seen with such frequency between spring and fall that officials think the large predators might be on the island permanently. And, for some local human residents, that possibility is taking some getting used to.
“We had to replace our dumpster twice because it looked like it had been body slammed,” Bar Harbor resident Terra Burns said about a bear that has visited her house more than once. “The trash box sat right next to our sliding door, and he ripped it apart. One time we were watching TV and my son looked over and saw the bear in the box. He peeked in our door and then ran.”
Burns is not alone. In an April 13 Bar Harbor Facebook group post, residents asked if anyone had yet seen evidence of “the Town Hill Bear” this spring, referring to a notorious local bear who was accused of preying on two goats and various rabbits in recent years.
One resident said they found bear droppings last month and saw a bear “lumbering down Norway [Drive] a couple weeks ago around 10 p.m.” — both of which occurred about a mile north of Eagle Lake Road.
Over the last few years, island residents and visitors have reported more black bear sightings than in previous seasons — though it is not clear why. Scientists aren’t sure if it’s because the park’s bear population has grown or their behavioral patterns have shifted, drawing the curious mammals closer to territory frequented by people.
Last year, between April 17 and Oct. 5, there were 41 bear sightings in Acadia National Park, according to Amanda Pollock, the park’s spokesperson. Those dates reflect the time of year that bears are active, while the island’s annual tourist season generally runs from Memorial Day through the end of October.
Acadia officials did not respond to multiple subsequent requests for additional bear sighting data.
An Otter Cliff Road resident, Ron Beard, said he’s caught a bear tinkering with his birdfeeder twice so far this April.
“I think the bears that were observed 20, 25 years ago were really occasional critters that might have been passing through and kind of checking things out,” Beard said. “More recently, we know that they’re living here on Mount Desert Island over the winter, so they’re bound to get in people’s way. We’re actually in their way — it’s their habitat.”
To get a better understanding of why there are more bear sightings, and what might be done to manage their presence in the state’s top tourist destination, scientists in the next couple of weeks will begin the first-ever multi-year study on how many bears are roaming around Acadia National Park.
Brittany Slabach, a biology professor at the College of the Atlantic and the project’s lead researcher, said bear sightings in Acadia National Park have risen over the past decade, according to record keeping by the National Park Service and anecdotal evidence.
Bear sightings on Mount Desert Island have been historically — and notably — rare. Since around 1968, black bears have been spotted only “here and there,” partly because of an 1800s anti-predator movement that used tactics like bear skin bounties to expel much of the island’s bear population, according to Slabach, a vertebrae ecologist.
Up until now, scientists have thought black bears on the island were transient, likely migrating for the summer season from Trenton and surrounding mainland towns.
But, after conducting a pilot study last year that photographed three distinct bears early in the season, Slabach now wonders if the island has a resident bear population. Scientists identified the three individual bears through their unique scarring, she said.
Slabach is partnering with the National Park Service and Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to conduct the bear study and understand how they’re related to each other, she said. That study is set to begin within the next two weeks and could last two to three years.
Slabach and her colleagues — including an undergraduate COA student completing his capstone project — will set up 15 to 25 hair snare stations around the island, checking them every 10 to 12 days.
The stations, equipped with trail cameras and scented bait, will draw bears toward barbed wire to snag a small clump of their hair, without feeding them and risking habituation. The goal is to collect bear hair follicles, which can reveal an individual bear’s genetic identity, allowing scientists to estimate how many bears are on the island and how they’re related to each other.
Slabach and the park are also developing a Google Form to centralize bear sighting reports, which are now scattered across several agencies — the park, state wildlife officials and local authorities.
Scientists are hoping to gather more information on the island’s bear population — whether resident or transient — in part to help protect them and people, and to educate the public on how to coexist safely.
“I came across several bear scat piles that were nothing but trash, which breaks my heart for a lot of reasons,” Slabach said, referring to human trash that the bears ate and then pooped out.
“At the end of the day, we’ve got to respect each other’s space. Bears really don’t want anything to do with people. They’re scared of us, but we want to make sure that they don’t become habituated.”