The Adirondacks are one of the main homes for bears in New York State. We talk a lot about keeping them away from our food and our homes and our campgrounds. But there's a lot of mystery still surrounding their lives and behavior. Like, how do bears actually stay strong while they hibernate all winter? And how far does a typical bear range in the mountains? We have a fascinating interview about a fascinating animal, bears, on today's story of the day.
Support for Story of the Day comes from Long Run Wealth, an SEC-registered investment advisor in Lake Placid, providing comprehensive wealth management, retirement, and financial planning solutions. LongRunWealth.com and the Devlin Inn & Suites, Lake Placid. TheDevlinNY.com Hey, I'm David Summerstein. It's Wednesday, April 30th. Goodbye, cruelest month. Hello, cruel black flag.
State lawmakers say there's still some loose ends to tie up in state budget talks, even though Governor Kathy Hochul announced a tentative deal on Monday. John Campbell reports for the New York Public News Network. Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins says they're still talking about reforms after a wildcat strike by corrections officers threw the state prison system into chaos. Didn't land yet.
There's still that conversation. The conversation is ongoing. So we did not land there yet. Governor Hochul wants to let some people out of prison early based on merit. She also wants to lower the minimum age for corrections officers to 18. She says that will help the state deal with its significant shortage of corrections officers.
In Albany, I'm John Campbell for the New York Public News Network. New York State is edging closer to allowing physician-assisted suicide. Our Capitol correspondent, Jimmy Veilkind, has that story. The state assembly is advancing legislation that would let doctors provide a lethal dose of drugs to terminally ill New Yorkers. Assembly member Amy Paulin says the medical aid in dying bill would provide compassion. She told the story of her late sister.
The lasting memory I have of my sister is shouting in pain. Several Democrats joined Republicans in voting against the bill. Max Rodriguez is a disability rights advocate. He's concerned ill people could be coerced into medically assisted suicide. Really, we just need to kind of make sure that we're not opening Pandora's box. It's unclear whether the bill will become law. State Senate leaders haven't scheduled a vote, and Governor Hochul hasn't taken a position on the subject.
In Albany, I'm Jimmy Veilkind for the New York Public News Network. There are thousands of black bears roaming New York right now. The best estimate puts the population between 6,000 and 8,000 bears, mostly concentrated in the Adirondack and Catskill Mountains. Emily Russell spoke with Jeremy Hurst, a big game biologist for the DEC, about bear safety and what makes the species so mysterious.
So it's spring now, which is a time when bears are back out roaming the woods and roaming through neighborhoods sometimes. New York State is now part of this national campaign, the BearWise campaign. Can you just tell me about that and why? It's helpful to be part of a broader national campaign about safety and bear education. Yeah, BearWise has been a great advent for us as bear managers because it consolidates the messages that we give to the public to reduce human-bear conflict.
Most of the issues that we encounter with bears are related to us and are. seemingly inability to keep our own spaces clean, largely inadvertently. We'll feed bears through our bird feeders or by not securing our garbage or feeding our pets outside. All of those are attractants for bears.
What we may not consider food can be really rich calorie sources for bears. And so the BearWise campaign allows us to give the same messages to the public here in New York as our colleagues are doing in Virginia and Florida and Texas. Texas and Colorado and Maine. And so when someone's recreating in bear country or whether they move across the country and are now living in a new place where there are bears, they're going to see the same messages.
And those are largely don't approach a bear and don't try to feed a bear. Remove your garbage and secure your garbage so bears don't have access. And that might be just keeping it indoors until the morning of pickup. or taking it straight to the transfer station. Don't feed birds when bears are active, and so that's an important message right now is bears are out of den, and so that we can take the bird feeders down or just make sure that bears won't have access to that.
Don't feed pets outside. Clean up your grills. Remove anything that's going to be an attractant food source for bears. So there is a success story here in the Adirondack High Peaks. Tell me about how the bear-human relationship has changed in the Adirondack High Peaks and lessons that have been learned about bear management there.
Yeah, and so that's a really good point. Everything we just talked about with the bear-wise basics and reducing human attractants has been a critical component of how we've managed bear-human encounters in the high peak. The Marcy Dam, Lake Colden area, a super popular area for summer backpacking and camping.
in 15, 20 years ago was a real focal area of conflicts where bears were stealing backpacks and getting campers food and bluff charging people to get them to drop their backpacks and was really a problem. Hundreds of negative interactions in the summer. And so we did quite a lot of work with research and following those bears and seeing if they were just local bears or they were coming in just for the summer. And it turned out that these bears often resided elsewhere and would come in for that.
really focal food source for a couple months. And so we attempted a bunch of different ways to try to help backpackers secure their food with bear hangs and cables and such. all of which failed until we instituted the bear canister regulation for the eastern high peaks wilderness area. And that's a requirement that all overnight users store all of their food in a hard, plastic, bear-resistant food container.
In doing so, bears don't have access to that food source, except in rare occasions when maybe someone doesn't. properly store their food. Access to the food source completely changed, and the conflict scenarios have dropped.
to zero, essentially. And so really high success for us at reducing human bear conflicts in the backcountry and the Adirondacks. Are there things about bears that we still don't know that... you're interested in finding out like are there like mysteries about bear characteristics or bear habits or you know how they spend their winters are there things that are kind of lingering that you're curious about
So bears are a really cool animal. And so some of the things that are really neat about bears that we're learning has been a consequence of technology. 20 years ago, when we were capturing a bear to try to understand its movements, we would put a VHF radio collar on that bear. And we would use an antenna and have to triangulate, use a plane to try to follow the bear. And it was really coarse. They would go off the grid. We didn't know where they went.
now we can use GPS transmitters on bears and radio collars, and you see precisely where they go. And you can actually see when they visit a dumpster and then see when they travel to Scroon Lake or back over towards Indian Lake and then back to Newcomb and then up to the high peaks and see the extent of... their movements. And so just seeing the way they use our space is really remarkable. But they're crazy wild creatures.
They sleep in the den for four to six months. They don't defecate or urinate or eat that whole time. That's amazing, right? And so honestly, bears are a species of... study by the medical profession trying to understand how they can persist in that semi-sleep torpor without deteriorating. If you and I did that, we would waste away. Our bodies would atrophy. We'd be a wreck. But bears can wake up and be just as muscular as they were. when they went to bed, they'll have lost a fair bit of weight.
But physiologically, it's remarkable. And not only that, but that time period when they're in the den, their bodies will heal. So they can persist through some horrific injuries, and their bodies will heal during that denning period. But they're also using that denning period to have their offspring.
And those cubs are born very small and nurse and grow and nurture in that den until they're ready to come out in the spring. So just remarkable animals. That was Jeremy Hurst, a big game biologist for the DEC, speaking with Emily Russell. We have more news all the time on our website, ncpr.org. Music today by Evan Veenstra of Gananoque and David Archibald of Kingston. Go Ontario. I'm David Summerstein, North Country.