First, we talk with Randy Johnson and Jennifer Price Tack of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources about bears in Wisconsin, including some research looking at their teeth. Then, Ben Michaels of the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission joins to talk about sturgeon ecology. Finally, Tally Hamilton of Ducks Unlimited joins to talk about waterfowl conservation in the midst of hunting season.
Featured in this Episode
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How teeth tell the story of Wisconsin’s bears
Bears are part of our everyday lives. Whether we spot a black bear while camping or cuddle up to a teddy bear at night, ursids are baked into cultures around the globe. We talk with two DNR scientists about Wisconsin’s bear population.
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Sturgeon: Wisconsin’s ancient fish
Lake sturgeon are native to the Great Lakes region. They can grow to more than six feet long and live for 100 years. We learn more about these fish, including their cultural importance.
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Working on Wisconsin’s waterfowl
With the duck, dove and goose hunting season underway, we head out to the fields and marshes with our guest to talk about the status of waterfowl in Wisconsin.
Episode Credits
- Lee Rayburn Host
- Randy Johnson Guest
- Jennifer Price Tack Guest
- Ben Michaels Guest
- Tally Hamilton Guest
- Jill Nadeau Executive Producer
- Clara Neupert Producer
- Trina La Susa Technical Director
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Speaker 1
As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report imported earlier this year in an effort to reduce the black bear population in part of the state and to meet increasing demand among hunters overall The DNR issued a record number bear lace hunting licenses this year, fifteen thousand two hundred and forty-five, and established a harvest quota of about forty one hundred and sixty bears this year And as the DNR says, there were this year over 34,000 people applied for one of these 15,000 plus bear licenses. Our black bear are estimated to be around twenty-three to twenty-four thousand in the state. How do we get that number and what do we know about the black bears of Wisconsin? Omley Rayburn and our guest today are Randy Johnson, Large Carnivore Specialist with a Wisconsin DNR, and Jennifer Price Tack Large carnivore research scientist and decision analyst at the Wisconsin DNR, and we invite you to the conversation with your black bear stories, your black bear hunting, your questions about the Tens of thousands of black bear that you can find across Wisconsin. Some places we’ve seen for s I think for the first time in a long time You can call 1-800-642-1234. That’s 1-800-642-1234. You can always send us an email to talk at WPR. org. And Randy and Jennifer, welcome to the show. Let’s start with how we know how many black bear there are in Wisconsin. What does the DNR do to get this estimate? Uh and w how Uh why is the population doing so well comparatively? And Randy, I’ll start with you on this.
Speaker 2
Sure. So Yeah. Um it’s a big question, right? I mean, l let me talk first about how we collect some of the data, and then I think I’ll pass it to Jen, who can talk about how we analyze it and get those results. So As you mentioned, we have a really healthy and sizable bear population in our state. We also have a pretty sizable bear hunting season. And so all of those bears that are harvested by law must be both registered with the DNR. As well as we require hunters to extract a couple of small teeth from the harvested bears. And I’m sure we’ll get into uh the teeth more, but those teeth uh and that data is sent into the DNR and that is what creates the foundation for our population monitoring program. And that’s where I’ll hand it to Jen who can explain those things in more detail.
Speaker 3
Sure, thanks for that, Randy. So our team gets the bear teeth every year, and we package them up and send them off to a lab that specializes in analyzing bear teeth and producing ages from them. So it’s actually a lot like analyzing or looking at tree rings on a tree. You can slice a tooth and then count rings, which are called cementum annuli, within that tooth in order to estimate how old that bear was. We take that information in combination with a lot of other data that we get, including the harvest data records and then information about reproduction, combine that information together, and we’re able to reconstruct what the population was before the harvest.
Speaker 1
So is that population then around twenty-three to twenty-four thousand the best we can understand?
Speaker 3
Yes, absolutely. That’s a great way to characterize it as well. These are estimates. We can’t go out and complete a census like we do with people with bears. You know, we don’t Unfortunately, we don’t have all their addresses. It would make our jobs a little bit easier, but we we are able to collect this information and then we do have those ranges to acknowledge that we don’t have perfect information here. We do have a pretty good estimate and we feel really confident about that and its ability to inform management decisions.
Speaker 1
So where does this population of Wisconsin black bear stand in comparison to the past in as far as estimates go, Randy?
Speaker 2
Yeah, good question. So, you know, bears are certainly a native species. They’ve been here pretty much continuously throughout, you know, the decades and in centuries going back, but there was a time in the 50s and 60s where bear populations were significantly reduced for a number of reasons. But we start to see the population start to kind of rebound as you go through the 70s, the 80s, the 90s. And really in the last couple decades here, we’ve seen the population really grow and expand. So grow in numbers, but also, you know, expanding across the state. So, you know, today bears are most common across the northern half of the state, obviously the forested regions of the state, but we’re starting to see more and more um you know continued expansion of bears into central and and kind of even the south uh southwestern parts of the state. In addition to you know where resident bears are, we see individual, you know, transient bears pop up really in any county of the state at this point. They can they can pop up um from time to time. Whether or not they stick around is another question, but But uh seeing a bear in southern parts of the state is becoming more common.
Speaker 1
Saw a story from uh Channel 15 NBC affiliate in Madison in July there were black bears spotted in Mir Lake State Park near Barraboo and Wisconsin Dells. So we’re finding bears in new areas throughout the state. Do we is there an explanation or an a hypothesis as to why?
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. I mean first I think it’s it’s a sign that our bear population is healthy. We have a healthy, you know, robust population, and a part of that means you have these young animals that you know, as they as they kind of become independent on their own, they strike out. And sometimes they go, you know, a number of miles in some direction and they stay kind of within bare range. But Every year there’s some number of them that strike out and and bears are well known to travel dozens, if not hundreds of miles sometimes in their you know, search for new habitat, new territory, a place to call their own and settle down. So I think a big part of it is just a sign that ou