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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

NC's Bear Population Going "Nuts"

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Monday, October 14, 2013   

ASHEVILLE, N.C. – Tales of black bears walking residential and city streets are becoming more common in parts of North Carolina.

What's to blame? It's nuts or acorns, to be specific.

A favorite food of the bears, there aren't many to be had this year in the higher elevations of western North Carolina, which forces bears to look for other food sources.

Josh Kelly, a biologist with the Western North Carolina Alliance, says the big swings in acorn production by oak trees are caused by a phenomenon called massing, that scientists haven't been able to explain.

"What is known is that generally, oaks across a wide region will have a coordinated output of nuts,” Kelly says, “so that on some years, they will all have low production and other years, they'll all have high production."

Acorn production is also thought to affect bear numbers. Kelly says one reason for the current high number of bears is that, in 2010, five different species of oak trees produced record high yields – which in turn, helped spike the bear population.

Last week, an Asheville man was charged with fatally shooting a bear and faces a $2,000 fine.

Starting next year, the N.C. Wildlife Commission will begin tagging black bears to track their booming population.

The agency is also considering extending the bear-hunting season, and including the central parts of the state, where bears were rarely seen until recent years.

Kelly points out that bears typically have more to fear from us, than we do from them.

"I can't think of the last black bear attack on a person in a suburban or an urban area,” he says. “Invariably what happens is, the bears are either moved or killed, either by being shot or by being hit by a car."

An estimated 18-20,000 bears live in North Carolina, with 6,000 in the mountains and 12,000 living on the coast.

Bears have even been spotted in unlikely areas of the Piedmont, and Wake County.




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