[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello everybody, it's Philip and this is
[00:00:03] Speaker B: the Bear Den where we talk about everything, mainly bears, but, you know, nothing's off the table.
This episode I'm joined by Heather Reich, a career wildlife biologist with a deep rooted passion for solving human wildlife conflict. She's also the founder of Barrier Solutions, which produce electric bear mats designed as a non lethal deterrent to give residents of bear country a simple effective way to protect their homes and families while reducing the chances of bears getting into trouble.
Heather's mission is rooted in prevention, empowering the public with tools that make homes less attractive and accessible to bears. It's a vibrant chat. Heather is a joy to talk to.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: We discuss how Heather got started, her experiences with bear management in Montana and Lake Tahoe, and there are definite lessons
[00:00:50] Speaker B: that can be applied across the board.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: Do you know anyone who could benefit
[00:00:54] Speaker B: from a bear mat?
We also talk about Corellian bear dogs, another effective management tool and also wonderful creatures in their own right. And you'll want to stick around to hear one of Heather's bear stories. Trust me on that.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: And a quick note before we get
[00:01:09] Speaker B: into it, that unless any other detours come up, we will be returning to
[00:01:14] Speaker A: the Northwoods and the Ventruti Wildlife Sanctuary
[00:01:17] Speaker B: in the next and last episode of this series for some final thoughts and a bit of a wrap up. But first let's head over to Heather.
There is a place in the remote northwards of Minnesota, North America. It's located near the town of ore, population approximately 300.
Outside of this town is an area where normal rules are put to one side. It's a place where humans and wildlife meet. It's a special place, wholly unique and not without its controversies. This is the Vinschutty Wildlife Sanctuary run by the American Bear Association, ABA for short.
The ABA is dedicated to promoting a better understanding of black bears and all wildlife through education, observation and experience.
I'm your host, Philip Stubley and welcome to the Bear Den.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: Oh, so it's lovely to have you here. Could you just introduce yourself and tell us where you're speaking to us from?
[00:02:12] Speaker C: Sure. My name is Heather Reich, I am the owner of Barrier Solutions and we are in a lovely little valley nestled between Reno, Nevada, Nevada and Carson City, Nevada. So when I wake up in the morning, I'm greeted with the Sierra Nevada kind of landscape in, in my window. It's lovely here.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: Oh, that sounds lovely. I think the only way I've been, I've seen the Sierra Nevada is the, on the, the beer bottles that you get the ipa,
[00:02:40] Speaker C: it's Much prettier in person.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I bet. So how did you come to Barrier Solutions? What happened? Let's take a few steps back here.
[00:02:49] Speaker C: Of course, it's been a trip.
I got my undergrad degree in wildlife biology at the University of Montana and Missoula. And when I was going to school, I was wolves. I was going to be a wolf biologist. That's all I ever wanted to do.
And I was graduating. This is really going to age me. But a few years after the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone, so wolves were, you know, really in the forefront.
And I graduated and got on with the Yellowstone Wolf Project as a volunteer. And, you know, here comes my dreams coming true, right?
And it was amazing sitting in Yellowstone national park watching wolves. But we had a pack leave the park and when they came back, they were missing a pack member.
And come to find out that a rancher had shot that wolf outside the park boundaries. And that was the moment that it clicked for me. And I said, you know, it's beautiful in here in the park, but we reintroduced these wolves to bring them back to the ecosystem. And they don't know park boundaries and they are going to go outside of that, which is, you know, kind of what we all wanted.
But I realized people need to be out there helping people live with these animals that we're bringing back. So wolves. And at the same time, you know, grizzly bear recovery was. Was starting to really take shape.
And that is when I realized that human wildlife conflict was what I wanted to be involved.
So I shifted and went into the human wildlife conflict arena and found myself more specifically human bear conflict.
And I had the honor of having my mentor be Tim Manley, who worked out of Kalispell on grizzly bear management. And he instilled in me very quickly the benefits of electric deterrence for bears. And we actually had a situation where a female and a couple of cubs got into a deep or a freezer in a guy's carport. And we were like, well, how. How do we deal with this one? Like, you know, we could. We could fence it off, but our net fences were huge.
And Tim was like, well, we have a rubber mat in the back of the truck and they have a hog panel and we have a fence energizer.
Let's put the hog panel on top of the rubber, hook the fence energizer to it and see what happens. And we put up a camera and she came in that night and stepped on and let out this amazing sound like hol and ran out of the Carport and her cubs followed her and they would not enter into the carport. You could hear them out there huffing and things, but they would not come back in. And I was like, that was really cool.
And didn't think any more of it. Went about my career, wrapped up about a decade with grizzly bears and came here to Nevada to work with black bears.
There was an organization up in the Lake Tahoe area that had actually created a more residential sized electric mat, a two by four mat. And I was really thrilled about this.
Under the Nevada Department of Wildlife, I purchased a bunch for us to use for mitigation efforts. And I fell in love with them and started realizing we're seeing a shift in the public's desire to not see aggressive management of bears. But when you have bears break into homes, you kind of do aggressive management.
But here's this tool that could keep bears from breaking into homes and structures, which is usually, you know, a line in the sand for wildlife managers. Once it breaks into a structure, that's a huge liability and it's non lethal. It's humane and it helps everybody. It helps the property owner save their house, potentially injury. Because once a bear's in house, if you get in its way and it wants to escape, it's going to hurt you going over the top of you. So then we've got, you know, injury that we're reducing and the bears live.
And the more I thought about it, the more I realized, you know, I, I kind of want to go in this direction. I think these mats need to be everywhere, not just in the Tahoe Basin and this other company, you know, their bread and butter was the Tahoe Basin and actually doing electric around homes on windows and doors to keep bears out. It's that bad up there?
[00:07:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I was gonna say, cause like Lake Tahoe, I mean it straddles California, Nevada, popular vacation spot. And it's kind of, I think it's the second highest density of black bears in North America, isn't it?
It's a spot where wildlife and people intersect. So yeah, I'm sure they've got, I'm sure they got their hands full with that.
[00:07:35] Speaker C: Yeah. And the break ins are just amazing. I mean dozens a day. And cubs of course are learning this from their moms.
So we actually hosted the Human Bear conflict workshop in 2022 in Lake Tahoe.
And I was sitting in the room looking at 300 people and I was like, you know, the bears are going to do fine. They have all of these people looking after them. What they need are the tools to be able to pass on to the public or, you know, the public need these tools. And I want to provide. I want to now become a resource for residents and colleagues alike.
So I went home to my husband and I said, can I leave my nice cushy government job with my stable paycheck and all the benefits that come with it and start my own business? And I don't know a thing about starting a business. And he was like, you know, sure, let's do it. And so we. I left the Nevada Department of Wildlife in the spring of 2023, and we started Barrier Solutions. And, you know, we're entering into our fourth season and we're still here and still alive. So hopefully I made a good decision.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Ye, yeah, no, it's great. I mean, I'm glad to hear your husband's supportive of it.
You're pulling him into the business as well.
[00:08:56] Speaker C: Absolutely. He's. He's been amazing. He was ready to hang up his day job, too, so it worked out really well for us. And, yeah, I honestly, for the first time in my life, actually feel like I'm helping. You know, I've. I've been on grizzly bear recovery, but I was a very small grain of sand on a very big beach of biologists that did that. And I feel like I'm. I'm having a wider reach with what I'm doing now, and I'm. I'm very happy.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: Oh, that's great to hear. There's a. There's a massive need for it. And obviously Lake Tahoe have got. It sounds like they've got their mat sort of area covered. So have you. Are you basically selling all across North America to anyone that needs it, or internationally as well?
[00:09:36] Speaker C: Yeah, we just. We're. We're right on the cusp of. Of international. We are. You know, Lake Tahoe, there. There are so many homes up there.
There's still quite a need up there.
Colorado, Aspen, Steamboat Springs, that Durango, those areas, and then Tennessee has really embraced it. So, you know, Gatlinburg and areas like that. But we, we are, right now, we're right on the cusp. We're just waiting for the absolute thumbs up from Japan to ship out 30 mats to them to be used on the island of Hokkaido with their brown bears.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: So I know that's a. An ongoing problem at the minute as well.
[00:10:18] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And Taiwan has a couple of mats that they're just kind of trying out to see if it'll work for them as well. So. Yeah, and then.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: Yeah, getting all over.
[00:10:30] Speaker C: Yeah. And I just sent out a few mats to a colleague of mine with the polar bear conflict up in Alaska. And I'm, I'm so excited. I said, well, please put up a camera because I don't know anything about polar bears. I'm going to be so thrilled if we can help out polar bears. That would be amazing.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: So if you don't mind if I just sort of wind back when you said that you worked, you're a wildlife biologist basically.
I suppose part of what you did there, there was a lot of calls to deal with bears and human wildlife conflict. I mean, what were the main issues there? What were the main reasons for it?
[00:11:08] Speaker C: Well, bears. Bears out here in the Sierra kind of, they don't, they don't play by the book. So up in the Tahoe Basin they're very. From down in the lower parts and the lower elevations. But you know, up in the Tahoe Basin what we would deal with mostly are home entries, vehicle entries.
We've got a pretty good handle on garbage. We really got the sanitation companies to embrace providing bear resistant garbage containers.
But then what we found was, you know, as we would secure along the human wildland corridor, they started coming further into the city.
So we would have those just, you know, I, I saw a bear in my backyard. It has gotten into my chicken coop or it's gotten into my, my bees or my fruit trees or, you know, anything that's going to be food to another creature is going to be food to bears. So koi ponds, all that kind of stuff. So yeah, yeah, all of it, you know, pretty much solved by electric.
[00:12:07] Speaker A: Wow, it's amazing.
So say get some electric eels probably.
[00:12:13] Speaker C: Yeah, right.
[00:12:18] Speaker A: Oh, that's interesting. I just always remember, like whenever I think of Lake Tahoe, it's probably, I think this was the California side, wasn't it? There was that. It was a few years back now. There was that sort of, that bear. I think it was actually a group of bears, but they got lumped together and it was Hank the Tank. Yeah, that one kind of really seemed to shine a spotlight on Lake Tahoe in general and bear management because obviously there was people who are wanted that to be dealt with, you know, because, you know, spares are going through their unsecured garbage, bird feeders, all these sort of red flag attractants and people like. Obviously there was a whole thing was that we want this sorted, but yeah, we want a non lethal measure as well.
[00:12:54] Speaker C: Yeah. And Hank the Tank actually turned out to be Hank at Hanketta.
Yeah, she, she had broken into a lot of homes and had taught her cubs how to do the same thing. And, you know, that's kind of the vicious circle that they deal with up there in South Lake. Tah is a pretty big town with a lot of bears, a lot of abandoned homes. So the bears will actually kind of den and daybed underneath these abandoned homes and then go out at night, hit the garbage cans.
And they've got a really good handle on garbage. But then you end up with. And I'm not putting the onus on tourists, but, you know, they accumulate a lot of garbage and then at the end of their stay, they leave and it may not be garbage pickup day. And they fill up the can and have more than what the can can hold, so they'll set things outside.
So even though there's a good handle on the garbage, there's still garbage available and people feed them sometimes. A lot of tourists will try and get that iconic Tahoe bear picture. And so it's, it's a constant, constant struggle up there.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: Yeah. All right. And so are you. I used, I guess through Barrier Solutions, you're still involved with all of that, just in a different sort of capacity. So.
[00:14:09] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I have a lot of good friends that are still on the ground, biologists with the California Department of Wildlife and the Nevada Department of Wildlife. So I keep in touch with them and let them know about things if they need to know. But they are, they're very happy to have the electric mats as a resource as well.
[00:14:25] Speaker A: Oh, fab. So, yeah. So, so how do these, how do the bear mats work then?
[00:14:31] Speaker C: Yeah, they're kind of a glorified electric fence that's just laid down on a rubber mat. Quite honestly, they. It's a rubber mat that is. We use a gym mat, which is recycled rubber and it's revulcanized so that liquid doesn't like, go in so that, you know, if you go through a freeze thaw cycle, you don't have to worry about the rubber splitting part. It's extremely durable.
And then we have two different pieces of metal that kind of fit into each other.
And one of those panels is hooked up to the hot polarity of an electric fence energizer. And the other piece of metal is hooked up to the ground on that electric fence energizer.
The idea being that when the bear steps on both of those opposing pieces of metal, the shock goes woohoo and goes from the hot through the bear to the ground. Because electricity is always trying to find A ground.
And that provides the bear the full extent of that 10,000 volts.
And bears have no reference for an electric electric shock. There's nothing in nature that does that to them.
So it's a psychological barrier on top of a physical one. And they don't want anything to do with it. They run off and, you know, I've seen one bear come back, it touched it and was like, what was that? And then stepped on it again. Was like, I'm out.
But they're so stinking smart that they start realizing that mat right there is what did it to me. And we've had amazing video of bears coming up to a mat and then just turning and walking away.
We had one bear that laid on the ground and was pulling pine needles away from the edge of the mat, but would not get close to to the mat. And it finally gave up and walked away. So it's really great. The, the energizers plug into, you know, a 15 to 20amp outlet, but it takes that amperage and converts it basically. And it only is putting out 300ths of one amp.
So it's taken away any electrocution concerns.
It doesn't generate enough heat to be a fire hazard either.
And so it's extremely safe. Extremely safe. The only things that don't do well on it are reptiles and amphibians because they're moisture content. Once that electric them to be a jump, they don't survive very well. But we've had squirrels, we've had mice get shocked on the mats too, and they're fine.
We use a mat that has a joule rating, which is, for lack of a better description, the umph. To send the shock through an obstacle.
And bears require, give or take, black bears probably about 0.5 joules to get a shock all the way through their big bodies. Grizzly bears are about 0.8. So our energizers are rated at 0.8 joules to. Just because our bears in Tahoe are every bit as big as, like, grizzly bears in Montana to make sure that they get the full effect of that shock. So it's a pretty pretty awesome system.
Again, non lethal and works for everybody because it's just. It's incredibly safe.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: Yeah, it sounds it. So the bears basically get like a little bit of a shock, bit of a buzz, and then encourages them not to come back. But there's no, like, lasting ill effects or anything?
[00:17:50] Speaker C: Absolutely not. No. I. I shock myself at least once a week.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: I was about to ask, how many times do you have people kind of tested them?
[00:18:01] Speaker C: We actually had a very funny video. We could never share it because, of course it was an Airbnb situation.
But the people had a camera that looked down on their deck and they had a mat and they had signs everywhere to let guests staying. No, there's this mat here and it was a group of young men, I'm assuming maybe a bachelor party, I don't know.
But one of them walked out the back door without any shoes on and his buddies are all sitting out on the deck and he starts hopping and going, oh, I just fried my leg. And all of his buddies are just laughing at him. He was fine. He was laughing, too. So, yeah, it's. It's non lethal. It's just the surprise more than anything.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: Yeah. A different type of buzz to what you expected on a bachelor party.
[00:18:46] Speaker C: You know, it's funny because you look at like the movie Jurassic park and that there's that scene of the Tyrannosaurus rex, it's like 10,000 volts.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: Be careful.
[00:18:53] Speaker C: And the shock you get when you get off your couch in the winter and you feel that static shock, that's actually 25,000 volts, but it's like minuscule jewels. You only feel it in your finger, but. So the volts aren't as scary as people would have you believe.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: No movies lie to me. No.
So do people kind of just order from you or do you have like more of a consultation thing where someone will get in touch and say, look, I need a map for this specific situation or like a specific area and, like, do you find you have to help them out a bit. Bit more in that. That way as well?
[00:19:33] Speaker C: Yes, to all of that. We have it so that people can go on the website and just click and buy, you know, people. We were taught as youngsters to fear electric.
More whole home electric. You know, the. The constant currents don't get zapped in your outlet thing. So they're a little worried about things. So a lot of people do want to be talked through the safety aspects. There are like, I think I need more than one. Can you explain to me, can you customize and we absolutely can. We are. It's just me and my husband. So you're going to talk to a human and we're here to help. We want to make sure that people have everything that they need. So.
Yeah. And you can either never talk to me or feel free to reach out and say, I think I might need more than what I see on the website. Can you. Can you help me with this.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: Oh, that's good. So yeah, so it'd be interesting to hear some examples of it in action as well. And like the sort of like you say, the common. I guess the common areas are like outside people's front doors or like by their like garbage areas or.
[00:20:37] Speaker C: Yeah. So bears noses are incredible. Seven times stronger than a bloodhound. So when I'm approaching a house, I'm approaching it as a bear. Okay, where's the kitchen? Because that is what's going to draw the bear's nose. That's where the most scent is going to be coming out.
And what windows and doors do we have around the kitchen that we need to be concerned about?
And usually a well placed mat or two on, you know, around kitchen areas is going to solve the issue.
In Tahoe because they don't play by the book.
Bears know there's food in houses. So sometimes that doesn't always work. We had a situation where we had three windows and a door that led into the kitchen area and we had all of those secured with mats. And then this spring, the bear came out of its den, saw the mats, avoided them, but then walked up the stairs to their upstairs bedroom door, broke in through that, went down the kitchen, the stairs to the kitchen and got into the kitchen that way. So if we're in an area where we know you've got a bear prowling around that has a really bad history, we may say you may want to consider more than this. But for the most part what we found is, is just a couple of really well placed mats, you know, in areas where the scent is really coming out is a great idea. We talked to a gentleman yesterday who said, well, I have a slider door, so do you have a mat that is, you know, I think it was eight feet. And we said, well, if it's a slider door, all you need is the one mat right where the handle is, because that is where the seam is that all the scent is coming out.
So if you put a mat there, you've taken care of your problem. You don't need, you know, two mats linked together or an eight foot mat or anything like that.
So kind of helping people through what they may or may not need and having that trust of, of me having, you know, 20 years of conflict experience really makes people comfortable that, you know, I'm not trying to just steal their money, I actually want to help.
[00:22:40] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely.
[00:22:41] Speaker C: Maybe it's a bad business model, I don't know. But I don't want to sell people more than what they, they need.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: Well, no, no.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: Well, you say you want to help them out, so, you know, it's good, it's good business because you'll be. Well, you'll get repeat business, hopefully, or they'll recommend to your friends, right? Well, absolutely. Because I'm guessing, like if the bear then doesn't want to come into that house next door, it might just go next door. So they might need one as well. So.
[00:23:04] Speaker C: Yeah, that's exactly right. Exactly right. The fun thing with the mats is, you know, we have situations where all of the. It may be an upstairs kitchen and you'll have, you know, a slider door and a couple of windows on an elevated deck with one set of stairs. All you need is one mat at the top of there's those stairs and that protects everything. You don't need three mats. So just kind of helping people through things like that.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: Yeah, because I mean, I did think one map. Is that gonna be enough? You're not gonna have. It's not like an electric fence going all the way around. You don't need that. Just a few well placed ones will keep the bears away.
[00:23:39] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Because again, once they hit that shock, they, they don't want anything to do with it. And they'll kind of, you know, a lot of bears will be like, I don't know what just bit me, but I'm not coming to the side of this house ever again.
[00:23:50] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, it might take some a little bit longer than others, but I guess they all eventually come to that conclusion.
[00:23:57] Speaker C: They do, yeah, they do. We, I mean, I, I don't put anything past a bear. I'm sure we'll run across a bear too, who's like, screw the shock, I want the food.
But we haven't found that bear yet, so.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: So it's interesting. Have you seen different reactions between like black bears versus brown bears to the mats? Have you, like, any sort of surprises
[00:24:18] Speaker C: there or, you know, just based on the video? Black bears are more apt to run.
They get shocked and they're like, I don't know what the heck happened, but I'm out of here.
[00:24:29] Speaker A: It's kind of like the number one solution for everything.
[00:24:31] Speaker C: Black bears, it really is like, go up the tree.
[00:24:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:36] Speaker C: Grizzly bears that I haven't seen that much video, but of the videos I have seen, they stop and think about it. They're like, what?
What just happened? Do I need to attack something?
No. And then they'll just turn and walk away.
And I think that's just part of that evolution. You know, grizzly bears sort of being a bit more defensive and analyzing, like, okay, what do I need to, what do I need to defend myself from where black bears are? Like, just go up the tree.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that sounds amazing. And anything else you've sort of learned, like through barrier solutions about bears that you kind of didn't know before?
[00:25:15] Speaker C: I guess really for me, it's been just talking to a lot more people than I ever have in the past about experiences with bears trying to get into their homes and how smart they can be about that, which helps us understand, you know, where our mats work and don't work. So our 2x4, our big mats at this point, we, we have for, for doors and things like that. I created a one by four mat which is basically one of our big mats cut in half.
My vision of that was people could put those on either side of their car and then also at their trunk and we can link them together in a daisy chain. And that would keep bears from breaking into vehicles.
But rather than they being used for that, people have really embraced them to line the front of their garages.
And so kind of trying to get in my head about using those to actually protect homes, because in my opinion, that's a very easy thing for a bear to step over.
So a lot of people ask, well, can I put just one of those small guys at my slider door? And I'm imagining the slider door being open, their child playing in the living room, the bear walking up and just stepping over the linkable mat, the little guy and getting into the house. And I'm like, no, I need you to do the two by four because they'll step on that. And we've had a couple of people now tell us, yeah, I was in the kitchen, I heard a noise on the front porch. I had the door open, I turned around and there was a bear coming in the front door. And it stepped on the mat and turned and ran.
And so getting more confident about, yes, the reaction is turn and run, that they're not going to go forward, they're going to go backward the way they came. Which, you know, makes me far more comfortable saying to people, you can leave your doors open and the bear isn't going to come in. Now, we did have a situation with a loaner mat that was put out down in Southern California. They had a lot of problems with bears denning under homes in Southern California this past year due to the massive fires they had.
And so one of the biologists down there had put a mat down in front of a crawl space entry that the bear had been denning in. But the bear had already been denning in there so it knew it was a safe place.
And they hadn't secured the entry, they just put a mat down and the bear stepped on the mat, got shocked and jumped forward, push, pushing the mat away basically with its back feet as it jumped through the hole. And I was like, ah, learning experience. If a bear is already like, bears are so set on getting back into their dens that this, this needs to be careful. We can't just say just put down a mat in front of the open hole. Like you need to secure the hole and then put the mat down so the bear doesn't try and break through whatever cover you've put on. So we are still learning, we always will. It's.
They learn too. So kind of keep up with them.
[00:28:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
And so I guess as well, just sort of reiterating the feedback you've got from people who have used the Berry Solutions mats is that they've. If yes, they're still seeing bears passing through or whatever, but the bears are not coming in up to the homes or approaching. They're giving it a wide berth. As soon as they have stepped on the mat they're away. And yeah, you might get different bears coming but they, they're not coming back potentially. It's a.
[00:28:39] Speaker C: Absolutely. That's kind of the thing is a lot of people say, well, after I shock the bear, should I put the mat away? And I'm always like, no, because there's five other bears waiting behind that one. And it's this point they're never going to find out how good the food is inside your house. So keep your mat up, it is safe. You can walk on it all day long as long as you have some kind of sold shoe on or you can get a timer and set that so it turns on, you know, kind of afternoon, evening and turns off in the morning before your dog needs to go outside or, or whatever.
But you know that it's a permanent solution. It will help your bear that you're dealing with now and then you'll never hear from the bears going forward.
[00:29:21] Speaker A: Yeah, keeping the bears wild sounds good to me.
[00:29:23] Speaker C: Absolutely, absolutely.
[00:29:25] Speaker A: Well, you've mentioned dogs and that might be a good. It's an excuse for me to segue into Corellian bear dogs because I happen to notice on your website that you said you have some and yeah, I, I'm fascinated by Corellian bear dogs as well. What's the history of the. The sort of.
[00:29:41] Speaker B: The dogs in general.
[00:29:42] Speaker A: And it gives a little sort of explanation about what sort of dog they are.
[00:29:47] Speaker C: Absolutely. So the Carilan bear dogs are a breed of dog out of Finland, is sort of where. Where the breed was created. And they were bred to hunt big game and sort of specialize in brown bears over there. Their job is not to attack the bear at all. Very different from, like, lion hounds and things like that. Their job is to go find the game, bay it up, and hold it for the hunter. And they don't bark until they have something. So the hunter hears that, goes and is able to take his game.
So the great thing is, again, they don't want to attack the bear. They're just out for the fun of it. They just. They'll hold it a lot like cow dogs hold a cow.
They're just ducking and weaving and having fun, getting in there and maybe nipping at its heels a little bit. And Carrie Hunt with the Wind River Bear institute, saw this and thought, well, this is. This is a great thing. And so she brought some to the United States and started presenting them as another conflict tool. And I started working with them in about the year 2000 and realized that having these dogs lets me do far more as a biologist, lets me put a bit more pressure on bears.
They're great for tracking. You know, if we had an orphaned cub or an injured bear that we needed to find to make sure it was okay, these dogs would track us into it.
They can.
Here in Nevada, they help us clear bears out of crawl spaces very safely. You know, where it may be a little bit sketchy to be under there with a big bear, these dogs provide us a layer of protection and urging the bear a little more.
You know, if we're in a situation where there's a big public presence, maybe some sort of fair or something, but there's food and bears are coming into the area.
We can very safely push the bears with the dogs and actually really decide what direction that bear goes.
You know, the beautiful thing about the dogs is really any dog is going to chase a bear. I've seen Chihuahuas chase a grizzly and her cubs off of a property. But when the bear turns and goes after the dog or stands its ground, a lot of those dogs are going to turn and come running home with the bear on their tail.
These dogs don't they just stand their ground and they're like, what do you want to do? Let's dance. You know, oh, wow.
And when we have bears that are sort of at an earlier level of conflict. When we release them from the culvert traps, we'll actually release the dogs at the same time so that they chase and bite that bear and give it a very negative experience around people and dogs and hopefully keep that bear a little more wary and at that lower level of conflict and not as quick to escalate to the point of breaking into homes.
So they have a huge repertoire of things that they can do for us. We've used them up In Montana, when we had had a bear shot at by some hunters and we didn't know if she was alive or passed.
The game wardens needed to be kind of down on the ground looking for evidence. But it's like, is there an injured grizzly bear that's going to come in and be defensive with us? And so we would just stand around them with the dogs and they were so comfortable knowing we can focus on this because if anything happens, the dogs are there, they've got our back, and worst case scenario, we release the dogs and they can. They can chase a grizzly bear away. I mean, they're just. They're such an amazing little tool to have. And they're adorable and they are my children. They eat better than I do and they sleep on the couch. And when we buy a house, we buy it to make sure the dogs will be happy. We don't care about us. But as long as the dogs have a great yard and you know, all
[00:33:34] Speaker A: that, that's the pecking order. Yeah. So how many do you have? Well, then eight names.
[00:33:37] Speaker C: I have three.
My female is Condi, which is the old Carillon cultures word for bear. Her brother Gimbal, which is my husband's little.
Those two share a very strong heartstring between the two of them. And then we have actually a white one that you probably saw on the photo on the website. Yeah, Lumi, which is the Finnish word for snow.
He is pure Corellian, but he has a recessive gene.
So he came out. It's actually a very, very light red. It's. It's exactly what the kermodi or spirit.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: I was literally about to say. He's the spirit bear of.
[00:34:16] Speaker C: That's exactly right. Like, he's got the reddish tinge to his ears and everything.
You know, he doesn't look like a Karelian. He acts. We call him the golden retriever of Karelians. He's very much. He's. He's very different in. And he likes to be around us. The other two like to be outside looking for things. Lumi likes to hang out with us, but, boy, if there's a bear, he'll go after it. The bear dog is very strong in that one.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: So is it quite intuitive? Are they quite intuitive with that?
Is there a lot of training for Karelian bear dogs?
[00:34:48] Speaker C: You know, the litter should be tested because not all Carilian bear dogs want to be bear dogs.
So I've always tested the litters for the dogs that I needed for that working aspect of them. So the higher prey drive, once you have those, everything's innate. As far as dealing with the bear, I mean, I can't run with them and be like, okay, bite here and bite here. I'm not that fast.
But I always make sure I have some overlap between my older generation and my younger generation. So the older generation can run with them after a bear and say, we don't go for the pointy end, we bite the poopy end and things like that. To deal with a bear is just innate for them. All we really train onto them is obedience. That's it.
I don't train any of the bear knowledge into them.
So it's kind of the benefit of that breed again.
[00:35:41] Speaker A: Yeah. And are they kind of always on duty or is there like a. Kind of. There's a downtime. They're just like, I'm done for the day.
[00:35:49] Speaker C: Yeah. You know, they know when the harness goes on, like, there's going to be a bear or a. We're going to smell bear here at home. It's, oh, mom, there's a lizard on the driveway. Or, you know, things like that. There's a strange big bird up in the tree.
But our neighbors actually, because we always tell them our dogs bark a lot because, you know, they see things.
And we always tell our neighbors, if they're. If. If it's annoying, please let us know. And we've had multiple neighbors say, no, we know when your dogs bark, there's something to go outside and look at. Something's going on.
So there is downtime, but not. Not all the time.
[00:36:28] Speaker A: Oh, that's so cool. And so I suppose, what do you see, sort of the challenges going forward over the next few years with human sort of bear conflict?
[00:36:39] Speaker C: You know, the thing that I tell everyone is that the reality is we don't know what the heck we're doing. We're just, you know, we take it as it goes. We.
We didn't have bear management. We didn't have wildlife management back in the early 1900s when so many of our species were extirpated from, you know, these areas where, you know, predators were horrible and we're going to kill them in favor of our livestock and things like that here in the United States. You know, we really started working on that in about the 1980s when we had agencies that realized the value of these animals. We want to bring them out back, we want these healthy ecosystems.
And at the same time we've got this human population that is expanding always.
And then in the mid-2000s, for some reason, it got really, really popular to live out west. So we saw this huge population boom in these areas where we're really bringing back these big populations of wolves and mountain lions and grizzl and black bears.
And so we're dealing with the success of bringing these animals back and at the same time seeing these human populations. And now we're all meeting each other and we managers are like, okay, we need to, we need to address this. And bears are always about two steps ahead of us. So like I described before, you know, oh, yeah, bear resistant garbage containers, that's great. Let's put them up there. Oh, wait, now the bears have learned. We just go further into town to find the garbage that we haven't secured cured. And so it's just this constant learning, the bears learning along with us having to change that tactic. You know, like I said, at some point I know I'm going to meet a bear or two that's going to figure out the mats and I'm going to have to deal with that.
But it's just this constant evolution of human bear conflict. Wildlife conflict is, you know, how do we deal with this as these incredibly smart animals learn all of our little tricks and we have to come up with new ones. And yeah, so that's just what I see as the future. I mean, human wildlife conflict. You have job security. It will always exist. It will always need more technology, more information, more tools, more resources.
And that's just kind of the truth behind it. But I do love seeing the population shift to now embracing these animals rather than, you know, way back when when they were seen as this scourge on the landscape.
[00:39:23] Speaker A: Yeah, well, suppose it's also like the language used around it now. It used to be nuisance bear, problem bear, now it's, it's conflict bear. Because it's not, we're not putting the onus on, on the bear.
[00:39:34] Speaker C: And because it's no and, and that's why it's human bear conflict. The people are actually, you know, the bears aren't the problem. It's all of us people coming in with all of our wonderful smelling food and our fruit trees and our barbecues and you know, us wanting to be backyard ranchers now with our chickens and our bees and all of these things. So.
[00:39:54] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, because. Well, yeah, but bear foraging habits haven't really changed. It's just where they can do it has, unfortunately.
[00:40:01] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Right.
[00:40:03] Speaker A: So on a, so I guess like on a scale of 1 to 10 then how optimistic are you for the future?
It seems.
[00:40:10] Speaker C: Yeah, I am fully at a 10.
You know, I, again, the people are embracing these animals, the respect for these animals, the need for them in the environment that is struggling, you know, with climate change and things like that. Knowing that these actually are very important parts of a healthy ecosystem.
Yeah, I, I think people really do want to help learn to live with the wildlife.
Even hardcore ranchers that maybe you know, came from a family of shoot shovel and shovel shut up are very much changing their tactics mainly because they recognize, okay, well if we shoot and shovel and shut up that one bear, then another one's gonna have to come. We're gonna have to do the same thing. And why not just get a livestock guardian dog? That's so much easier, you know, and so the attitude is very much changing.
[00:41:05] Speaker A: That's good. And I suppose keeping the positive vibes going, I guess. I wondered if you had any sort of particularly favorite memories of bears that you.
[00:41:16] Speaker C: It's.
Oh, I have a few. I don't know how many you have time for.
[00:41:21] Speaker A: I've got all day.
[00:41:23] Speaker C: I'll, I'll, I'll share one that involves also a Corellian bear dog. So my first dog, her name was Fancy and she was amazing and she taught me so much about trusting a Corellian bear dog. So we had a sub adult grizzly bear that showed up in the middle of the town of Whitefish, actually on the beach of Whitefish Lake in Montana in the middle of the day. Very unusual. And so me and Fancy, my husband and Tim Manley, we, we hauled down there to and find this bear, get a dart in it and get it out of there and put it back up in the mountains.
So we got there and somebody was like, yeah, I think I saw it go that way like 10 minutes ago. And it was this trail that went from a road down to Whitefish Lake.
And so we walked down this little trail and at one point, you know, there were all these low laying shrubs and Fancy jumps into the bush and I'm like, no, no squirrels. Come on, we're trying to Work on a bear here. And we go down to the beach and look up and down and there's no bear. And we're like, well, shoot. So we turn around and we walk back out. And at the exact same spot, Fancy jumps back into the bushes. And I'm like, what are you looking at? So I get down and I look through the bushes and not 20 yards away is the grizzly bear hunkered down under a tree like, crap, they found me. And I was like, oh my gosh. She was telling me like, no, mom, the bear, it's. It's right here. I'm just trying to tell you.
And that turned into a three hour chase of this bear through Whitefish.
At one point, I got separated from my husband and Tim Manley. They had gotten a dart in the bear at this point, but it took off running. And so I've got Fancy on its trail. And I'm just, you know, running up and down all these roads and I turn this corner and there's a construction worker in the middle of the road. And he just has the most shocked look on his face. And I knew immediately. I'm like, he saw the bear. So I said, which way did the bear go? And he just kind of is like, it went that way. And so I'm like, thank you. And I start running. So he's seeing this 20 something girl behind a dog running after this bear. And he's like, do you need help? And I was like, sure, come on. And I threw him my bottle of bear spray. And we, we found the bear and we were able to radio to Tim and Derek that we had. And.
And it was again kind of at the base of a tree.
So they joined us and I'll add that the police department was with us, but staying about 100 yards behind us,
[00:43:56] Speaker A: terrified, bringing up the rear, you know.
[00:43:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
So Tim gets another dart into the bear and he's like, okay, Heather, go and get the truck so we can transport it back to where the trap is. So I get Fancy, jump in the truck, drive around to meet up with where the bear had started going underneath the sedation. And they're in the trees and I park and all I hear is, Joe, get the taser. And I'm like, what?
I was gone for three minutes. What happened? And it turns out that the bear had sedated up against a chain link of a yard and a pit bull was on the other side. And it squeezed underneath the fence, latched onto the bear.
And the bear is being stimulated by this. So it's not fully going underneath the sedation.
And this random construction worker is still here. I wasn't there, but this is what Tim and my husband told me is he grabbed the pit bull by the scruff and by the back of its butt, said, sorry, dog, hoisted it off of the bear and threw it back over the fence.
So at this point, the bear is allowed to sedate. We get it into the back of the truck, we drive away.
Construction guy disappears. I never saw him again. I desperately wanted to thank him for all of his help that day.
[00:45:17] Speaker A: He probably was just like, I'm done now. I don't know what else. You carry on. He didn't know what else was going to happen if he joined you, probably.
[00:45:24] Speaker C: I've just got a great story, and I'm happy with this.
So we drive back. I sit in the back with Fancy in the back of the truck with the bear, and she's kind of licking where the dart went in because there was a lot of blood. And we get to where the trap is, and of course, there's public on scene. And Tim Manley was wonderful about letting people meet bears when they were sedated, actually touch a bear, smell the bear to dispel that rumor that they smell like dirty socks.
And I look over and Fancy is starting to, like, collapse in the back of the truck. And I thought, oh, she's got heat exhaustion because we've been going for three hours.
But I'm like, it's not really presenting. Like, I don't know. And then all of a sudden, it occurred to me, me, she licked on where the dart went in. So she got some of the sedation medication.
We went home that night, and we were just like, what just happened? And the. The banger to that story is that there was a crew from Animal Planet that was in the area filming us. And they had called that morning and said, is there anything going on? And we were like, no, we haven't had any calls. So they went to go and film down at the bison refuge.
We got back, and they're like, did anything happen to you? We're like, well,
[00:46:39] Speaker A: yeah, it would have been your season highlight.
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:46:44] Speaker C: So that's probably the craziest story and my favorite one to tell, because it was just like, every step of the way was just what?
[00:46:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Thanks for sharing. Yeah.
It's like, truly anything. Anything can happen with humans and wildlife, isn't it?
[00:47:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:47:02] Speaker A: Every day is different. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:47:05] Speaker C: So, yeah, fun stuff like that. I've got, you know, favorite bears here or there that Taught me a lot about, you know, life in general and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, someday I'll, I'll find time to sit down and write a book.
[00:47:19] Speaker A: But yeah, you should let me know. I want to sign copy, of course.
And I suppose as well as we saw near the end, I figured it would be good. So we've got bear mats, we've got stuff. You mentioned bear spray. What else can people do?
Some practical sort of advice about how to help reduce human bear or human wildlife conflict.
[00:47:42] Speaker C: You know, the easiest answer to that is just think like a bear. If you have something around your house that another animal will eat, a bear is going to eat it. If you want to get chickens, get chickens, but then put up an electric fence around them. Same with beehives. If you're going to invest all of that money into these things, invest a little more so that bears don't come in and get them.
You know, fruit trees put an electric fence around the base of it. We have a gentleman who has a giant sequoia in his yard and the bears use that sequoia every day. But then they also come up on his deck and start looking at his windows. So we just threw up an electric fence around the trail trunk. All you need to do is keep them from being able to climb up the trunk and then that makes your property a little less attractive.
Bird seed, don't feed birds. Birds are just fine. They don't need your bird seed. Please don't do that. If you must feed birds, basically in the morning, go and throw a handful or two out in the grass where birds can jump around and pluck them up one at a time. But a bear is not going to come and find a Coke can fully of, of seed and benefit from those calories.
You know, if you've got a pond, expect to see bears. It's not necessarily a food attraction, but they will bring them to their yard.
You know, don't have koi in there. You invest a lot of money into koi fish. And that is just a wonderful little pond for a bear to go into and eat your fish. And then at the same time they tear the lining, which I've been told is like $45,000.
So just, you know, I mean, and again, that's another thing. If you want put up an electric fence around your pond to keep bears away from it. It's really very, very easy to keep bears away. If you live in bear country, get a bear resistant garbage container.
Do not put it in your garage. That's opposite Logic, leave it outside so they don't feel like they need to break into your garage to get to your garbage. Leave it outside, they'll knock your can out. You may find it out in the middle of the road in the morning. But that's better than, than the bear breaking into your garage.
And if you can, please don't have refrigerators and freezers in your garage. I've had so many situations where bears have broken into garages and there's no food even in those refrigerators or freezers.
But I don't know if they hear the engine running on it or if there is some smell of a refrigerator that they're like, there's a refrigerator in there. And refrigerator means food.
So if you can, don't have those in your garage either. Have nothing in your garage and just be vigilant. If in an area where bears are breaking in, you know, at night, lock up your doors and windows, close those windows and lock them because an open window is a piece of cake for a bear to come into. And remember, those noses are amazing and smell is drifting out to them and they'll want to come in. So, you know, just our motto is help bears live with people because again, we're the problem, not the bears. So just do what you can to help the bears because they end up paying the price price for our mistakes. And it's an unfortunate truth. I was one that had to make those hard calls. I hated it.
And it's so easy to keep them from getting into the level of trouble that makes agencies have to remove them and potentially kill them.
[00:51:05] Speaker A: No, Very true.
I suppose as well. I will put a link in the show notes but if you'd like to just tell people where they can find out more, more about barrier solutions and about your work, be great.
[00:51:18] Speaker C: Thank you. Yeah, so our website is just www.barriersolutions all1word.com and it's B E a R I E R not B A R R. So it's a play on bear.
And you know, I'm here for everybody. I was a public servant the majority of my career and that will never leave me. So any, anybody that writes me to ask me questions about anything, I will help you. I don't care if you know, you don't live here. Wherever you live, I, I will help you. You can send me pictures of your setup and say what would you recommend? Like I am just, I'm just here to help so you know, it doesn't have to be purchasing mats. I'm again happy to Advise on whatever. If somebody wants to put up an electric fence, I am happy to advise you on tools that you need, provide you pictures of fences, anything you need. I'm. I'm here for, for all of you.
[00:52:14] Speaker A: Oh, thank you. We. We. Well, I appreciate it. I'm sure everyone else does. Oh, that's brilliant.
Anything else you'd like to add or any sort of the takeaways for listeners?
[00:52:25] Speaker C: You know, one thing I mentioned, and I just want to kind of drive that home, is just respect for bears. I see a lot of people that, that seem to have forgotten that they are, you know, a pretty powerful creature. They're not a pet to, you know, want to feed or anything like that.
Respect the fact that these are. Are wild, beautiful animals and love that you see them for the moment, but recognize that you may not be seeing them in where they should be and then, you know, ask them to leave. I. I know their cubs are so cute and you just want to go and snuggle them, but please don't recognize that these are wild animals. They don't want to be pets. They don't want to be treated like pets.
Appreciate them for the wonderful creature that they are and just remember that when you see them.
[00:53:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's a lovely sentiment to end on. So, yeah, that's great.
[00:53:32] Speaker B: The Bear Den the American Bear association podcast was written and presented by me, Philip Stubley. The music was composed by React Music.
Thank you to everyone who has helped make this podcast possible, including Karen Hauserman, Bill Lee, Clarie Lee, Stephanie Horner, Donna Brzinka, Ross Coyer, and Angie Page.
[00:53:51] Speaker A: You can find out more about the
[00:53:53] Speaker B: American Best bear
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[00:54:44] Speaker C: Sam.
