What are the Bears eating today?

by Derek Ryder, Wildlife Ambassador & IGA Interpretive Guide

It is now mid June; EVERY bear is awake and has migrated down to the valley bottoms. Sightings of bears in towns and along roadsides have increased. Part of this is because it’s elk calving season, and a bear getting their teeth on a baby elk would be great for the bear (not so much for the elk, but then there’s a lot more elk than bears). However, bears aren’t that great when it comes to hunting, and in general, they get FAR more energy from plants than meat. Now is the time of the year for one of the “Top 5 Plant Foods for Bears in the Bow Valley”: Dandelions.

In case you haven’t noticed, Dandelions grow everywhere people are. That’s because the Dandelions you see, Taraxacum officianale, are not native. There are two native dandelions: the Alpine Dandelion (another Taraxacum species) and the “False Dandelion” (which is not a Taraxacum, so not a dandelion, despite being named one). The native species are only found in the high alpine, and are FAR outnumbered by the common, lawn variety Dandelion.

Native to Europe and Russia, the first Dandelions in North America were intentionally brought over on the Mayflower! Basically all parts of the plant are edible, and they’ve been a significant part of human diets for much of recorded history, including the Egyptians, Romans, Greeks and Chinese. From wine to coffee to salad greens, people have eaten a lot of dandelions despite their diuretic properties. You can even make rubber from the latex in the flower stem (though the latex itself is a laxative). As a result, people took Dandelions with them as they moved around the planet.

Bears like the yellow flower best, though have been recorded digging for the roots. You can see Grizzly 136 chowing down on Dandelion flowers on the side of my yard in the photo. He spent a happy few hours in my hamlet eating every Dandelion flower he could find. The flowers are full of protein and carbohydrates, are sweet and full of vitamins as well. And, like all the best bear food, are very, very plentiful in the right spaces. Dandelions are one of the first flowers out in late May and stay in flower through June and into July, when other berries start up.

It should come as no surprise that the scat of a bear eating Dandelions will show signs of yellow, though less than you might think, as Dandelions are readily and almost entirely digestible. Generally, Dandelion-filled scat is a pale greeny-brown with some yellow flecks as shown in the picture.

Dandelions like disturbed soil, need a lot of sunlight, and are where people are. I just described roadsides, and that’s why many of the bear sightings that have occurred in the last while (and will occur for the next few weeks) are beside the road. Dandelions spread like crazy along roadsides and in ditches, and occasionally along trails, though generally not too deep into the forest, as a forest isn’t a great habitat for them. So roadsides are where the Dandelions are, and where the bears are for the next while, making the risk of roadside collisions a big risk everywhere. The wildlife fences along the TransCanada are good at keeping ungulates out, but are readily climbed by bears. At least one roadside black bear death near the Sunshine turn off in 2019 was due to bears climbing the fence to get dandelions in the median and on the shoulders.

When we talk about “controlling attractants”, a lot of folks think of crabapple and other fruit trees, but Dandelions also qualify, especially if you’re proximal to the forest edges in town. We’re never going to eliminate this invasive plant, however, so hand digging, and simply plucking the flowers each day, both work, and are better strategies than chemical ones, for obvious reasons. These days, I pick over 200 flowers from my lawn each DAY.

I think there’s a degree of irony that bears here (and bees, too) have come to rely on an introduced species for their survival. But bears are pretty adaptable, and if they weren’t chowing down on something we basically planted for them, they would find the “next best thing”.

Click here to find out ‘What the bears are eating’ in other months!