david kocka – C-VILLE Weekly

Bellair bears: Ursine invaders trash neighborhood

By Eileen Abbott

Bradley Kipp recently noticed evidence of a nighttime intruder in the tranquil, wooded Bellair neighborhood west of town where he lives. A resourceful problem solver, Kipp decided to use bungee cords to thwart the thief.

He created makeshift “locks” to tightly seal his trash bins, which were being regularly rummaged through, apparently by a bear that left frequent morning messes all over the yard. “Obviously, a bungee cord won’t stop a hungry bear, but that’s not really the goal” he says. “The goal is to frustrate the bear so he/she simply gives up and moves on. We’ve only had one bear incident since adding the bungee cords.”

Down the street, Kipp’s neighbor, Bev Sidders, shares a similar experience. “I’ve had two incidents this spring of bears coming into my carport, between my cars, turning over my trash cans, and dragging trash all over the yard. I’ve had to move my trash cans into a fenced-in area, and move my cars to get them in and out, so it’s a big inconvenience,” she says.

Some residents believe the bears may have meandered into Bellair after being displaced because of the land clearing going on at nearby Birdwood Golf Course, which is currently undergoing renovations.

“Their habitats have been destroyed,” surmises Sidders.

“We are new residents to the Bellair neighborhood, so this is new to me,” says Kipp. “However, my parents have lived in the neighborhood for four years, and this is the first year they have noticed a bear problem.”

“Construction might impact movements of bears, but mostly it is a food-driven system,” says Virginia Department of Game & Inland Fisheries wildlife biologist David Kocka. Last fall, very few acorns were produced across much of Virginia, he says, and when natural foods are limited, bears search more for food in the spring because there are no leftover acorns.

DGIF Regional Wildlife Manager Jaime Sajecki explains that bears are coming out of dens after months of not eating. Some have given birth and nursed cubs with nothing to eat for months. They lose 30 percent of their body weight, and if there were not good natural food sources in the fall, they can be on the edge of starvation by early spring.

“Bears only come into human-occupied areas because they are desperate for easy foods that don’t take any effort to get,” she says. “They can eat a whole day’s worth of calories from one bag of trash. Bird feeders and garbage cans are the fast food option for bears who would rather spend less calories getting the most calories they can.”

Virginia has never had a bear-caused fatality, she says, and bears are not in neighborhoods because they want to eat people or pets. “It is the buffet of half-eaten sandwiches, pizza crusts, and all the other things we put in the trash that draw them in.”

There is no increase this year in the bear population, which DGIF monitors in five- and 10-year-trends, says Kocka. “Bear populations don’t really change very quickly.”

Game & Inland Fisheries recommends going to its website, which includes information on how to reduce the chances of bears visiting your property. After a few failed attempts to find food around homes, bears will usually leave the area.

“Simple preventative steps make sure that we can all coexist,” says Sajecki.

Bellair resident Betsy Tucker accepts the fact that there is wildlife in her neighborhood, “We live very near the mountains and woods, and it comes with habitat. I didn’t pay to live in a sidewalk community. I don’t mind the bears at all. They’re not grizzlies.”

Deer, however, are another matter, says Tucker’s husband Chip. “The deer are fearless, ubiquitous, and on the increase.”

Sidders agrees. “At least eight live in my yard and have destroyed a contorted filbert tree, dug up or eaten all my tulip plantings, and anything else that I don’t surround with a wire cage,” she says.

Tucker’s neighbor, Dr. Matthew Bowen, says the issue is management, and he’s been vocal about his hopes the UVA Foundation will allow deer hunting to keep the wildlife population in check. The foundation owns , both of which border the Bellair neighborhood, and it stopped bow-hunting when it acquired those properties several years ago.

Many Bellair residents believe this has contributed to deer over-population. “We very much wish that the university would regularly thin the herds by bow-hunting, and make the meat available to local people who need it,” says Tucker.

Bill Cromwell, director of real estate asset management for the UVA Foundation, hasn’t seen any significant damage to either property, “If they did cause significant damage, UVAF would investigate measures to mitigate any issues,” he writes in an email.

His development team meets monthly with the neighborhood associations adjacent to these properties, he adds. “Residents should feel free to contact their HOA representatives to express their concerns.”

‘Medieval solution:’ Resistance emerges to plans for potential deer culling

Calling the potential deer culling in Charlottesville a “Trumpian solution to a practically nonexistent problem,” one city resident says policymakers should consider non-lethal alternatives before condoning a city-sponsored killing.

“We all live in Charlottesville because we appreciate the natural world and what it adds to our human life,” Holly Court resident Laura Jones wrote in a letter to City Council. “Deer are part of that world.”

She received a response from Kristin Szakos, who wrote that she has followed the issue for six years, both as a city councilor and a Locust Grove resident, and that she understands Jones’ “love of deer in [her] neighborhood.”

“I’m not a deer-lover,” says Jones, who adds that she has spoken up for those who do not wish to see wildlife slaughtered in their backyards. “Using a bowhunter to kill deer within the city limits is a dangerous idea and a medieval solution to a 21st-century problem.”

The only city ordinance that refers to bows and arrows says, “No person shall discharge arrows, nails or bullets from a bow or crossbow in or into any street or other public place…This section shall not be constructed to prohibit the use of bows and arrows on authorized archery ranges.” But City Attorney Craig Brown points out that a “public place” is not defined in the code, so whether hunting is allowed has been debated.

Charlottesville does not have ordinances regulating hunting, Brown says, “except for a prohibition on hunting birds and wild fowl,” and while it does have the power to adopt an ordinance on bowhunting within city limits, it has not done so.

Deer may be killed with a permit issued by the Department of Game & Inland Fisheries, however. Matt Knox, a deer project coordinator with the department, says 545 kill permits have been issued specifically for deer in Albemarle County since 2012, with 86 of those issued this year. Most of the addresses on the permits, though, are in Kewsick or North Garden, he says.

In Szakos’ e-mail response to Jones, the councilor said she first, “as an animal-lover,” was optimistic about finding a non-lethal way to control the deer population, but research has “led [her] to regard that path as unfeasible, expensive and ultimately ineffective.” Wrote Szakos, “I now believe that the only way to effectively reduce the population and address these issues is through hiring professional bowhunters to selectively kill deer.”

Their e-mail exchange happened just before the July 18 meeting in which David Kocka, a representative from the Virginia DGIF, presented the state’s DGIF report and said hunting is the most effective means of controlling the deer population.

The report did not have any Charlottesville-related deer population data, though Kocka did say the state’s deer population is stable and not increasing. In a submitted report to council members, but not in the presentation given to them, seven out of nine population-management options did not include human hunting or sharpshooting.

The report further informed Szakos’ opinion, she says, adding she learned cities that have hired sharpshooters to kill the deer have spent upward of $100,000 and have not been able to get the numbers down significantly. Opening the regional hunting season in the city may be the best alternative, she says.

“It wasn’t exactly what I was ready for,” she adds. “I’m still struggling with the idea of it.”

Though it doesn’t initially seem like it, Szakos says allowing locals to bowhunt deer within city limits could be more humane than current circumstances.

“We are culling them now with cars,” she says, adding that she lives on the bypass and has heard them get hit in the past. “I’ve discovered that deer can scream. It’s horrible to listen to them die.”

So far this year, 60 reports of dead deer in a right of way have been filed in Charlottesville, whereas only 47 were filed in 2015 and 11 in 2014, according to data from the Department of Public Works.

Numbers show that deer running into highways are a persistent problem, but relying on culling with cars is not enough, says Szakos. “We need to come up with something better than that. The status quo is not an option at this point.”

The DGIF report, she says, reminded her that humans are the natural predator to deer.

“[Hunting] reinforces to the deer that they are prey animals, which our deer have forgotten because there is nothing preying on them,” Szakos says. “By having predators in the ecosystem, it causes deer to act like prey animals and not be strutting down the sidewalk and intimidating pets,” which are both issues locals have complained about to council.

Jones is “very surprised,” she says, that council “swallowed [Kocka’s] data, hook, line and sinker,” without questioning the lack of city-related statistics or pressing the DGIF for non-lethal alternatives, but a vote was not taken and Szakos says they will hold a public hearing in the future.

Jones says Kocka touted “killing for convenience” because the report showed that Charlottesville does not need to reduce the deer population for biological reasons, but because locals are irritated with the animals for trivial things, such as eating their plants.

“It frightened me to live in a place where people value landscape more than life,” Jones says.

Kocka says it is nearly impossible to measure deer in any city or town because “populations are not static, to begin with.” He says controlling numbers of deer is based on a town’s “cultural carrying capacity,” or the idea that everyone has a certain tolerance for wildlife.

“That’s the crux of the issue,” he says. “When you start whacking them with your cars and they’re eating shrubbery around your house, that’s when a lot of people’s tolerance is exceeded.”