Florida Black Bears
While giving tours of the everglades, I get a lot of questions from the tourists about the bigger animals that inhabit the everglades. I am an airboat tour guide on the river of grass (the everglades).
The tourists ask me if they will we see any panthers, bears or manatees on the tour?
Then I explain to them that the everglades are made up of three distinct ecosystems, which are the everglades (river of grass), the cypress forest and the mangrove forest. I conduct airboat tours on the river of grass, which starts in the center of the state and extends to the east. I go on to explain to the tourists that the panthers and bears mostly live in the cypress forest, which starts in the center of the state and extends to the west. The terrain in the cypress is swamp, open grass prairie and hard wood hammock islands. The bears and panthers like the cypress forest because there is more dry land there.
Bears are not easy to find. Bears are shy and blend in with the scenery so well that I walked through an area and didn’t even see a bear in the middle of a grass prairie. One morning I went out deer hunting. I got up before the sun came up and walked to an area about 1 mile from our cabin. I climbed up into a tall oak tree on a hard wood hammock that bordered a wide open grass prairie and a cypress slough. As the sun came up, I could see across the grass prairie that was dotted with small wax myrtle trees. After about two hours of sitting in the oak tree and seeing no deer, I decided to go back to camp. I walked back across the grass prairie and as I reached the other side I thought I saw something move. So I climbed up into a small tree and waited. Looking back across the prairie I could see one of the wax myrtle trees moving. The tree turned out to be a bear but he was so far away I had to use my binoculars to get a good look at him.
Bears are shy and when they think there is a human close by, they will in most cases leave the immediate area.
People are not on the black bears list of things to eat. Bears eat a lot of bugs and grubs that they find in old tree trunks. They also eat a lot of berries, plants, and roots. A bear will also eat small animals like rats, rabbits and raccoons. A large hungry bear will eat big things like pigs and deer.
There are not many bears left in the everglades region, 60 to 80 would be a good guess.
Human population is the problem, people are moving in and pushing the bears out and out is actually into suburban areas. Bears become a problem when they realize people have food. The bears in the area of our cabin in the cypress forest found out that we have food stored in our cabin. My best friend Keith Price, (his daughter) Kimberly, (my son) Glenn Jr. and I went to the cabin to spend the weekend having fun. We loaded up all our camping gear onto our swamp buggy and headed out to the cabin. As we got close to the cabin we saw that a bear had been in the area. We past by three cabbage palms that had been shredded by a bear. Bears love to eat cabbage palms. A bear will climb up a cabbage palm that is about 10 or 15 feet high. Once at the top the bear will tear off the top of the palm and eat the tender middle of the palm (hearts of palm). We could also see bear tracks in the middle of the swamp buggy trail, heading for the cabin. A female black bear can weigh almost two hundred pounds and a male can weigh three hundred pounds or more. Knowing a bear was in the area, we continued to look for the bear. Little did we know the bear had already been to our cabin. When we got to the cabin we could see that the screen door had been torn off. We got off the swamp buggy and cautiously entered the cabin. The bear was not there but we could see the mess he left behind. The cabin was a complete disaster. The bear went into all of the cabinets and wiped them clean. Anything on a shelf or in a cabinet was on the floor. There was BBQ sauce, peanut butter, jelly and dish soap all over the floor. The curtains and all of our beds were on the floor. The bear also decided to relieve himself, but he didn’t make it to the bathroom. It took us 5 hours to clean up the mess before we could sit back and enjoy our trip.
The cypress forest is a great place to go looking for bears but I don’t think you will see one. Bears like to come out at night and early in the morning and don’t hang around populated places.
I do hope you enjoyed my story this month and hope you will check out my story next month
BYE FOR NOW! GATORMAN
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PS. NATURE RULES!!!!!!!
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