Today’s round of questions, my smart-aleck replies and the real answers:

Question: Regarding the bear situation, my concern is that nothing kills these bears. Did you ever see a roadkill bear, like a deer, raccoon, possum or squirrel? So, every year these mamas are producing one or two more cubs, so every year the population is increasing exponentially, as more reach the age to reproduce. What is the answer? Trap and export them? Feed them birth control pills maybe? How about capturing males and castrating them? Something’s got to be done soon as it continues to become a problem. I’m sure you will have a witty answer, John.

My answer: Generally speaking, when you toss the word “castration” at a male of any species, wit evaporates instantaneously. Such was the case here. I have also bought a stainless steel codpiece.

Real answer: My recent column about whether we’re heading toward bearmageddon spawned this query. As I noted, we have 8,000 to 9,000 black bears in western North Carolina, and Buncombe County typically accounts for about one-third of the state’s human-bear interaction reports annually.

Our bear population is growing in part because bears have so much access to human-related food, whether that’s garbage, bird feeders or people intentionally feeding bears, all of which cause problems. 

Before we get to bear birth control, let’s clear up a misconception the reader has that bears do not get hit by vehicles. I’ve seen dead bears on the roadside at least three times, and it’s unfortunately not that uncommon.

“As stated before, collisions with vehicles are the number one cause of mortality of bears living in and around Asheville, followed by legal hunter harvest,” Colleen Olfenbuttel, a North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission wildlife biologist, said via email. “In fact, Buncombe County continues to be the hotspot for human-bear vehicle collisions in the state.”

For 2023, the most recent year available, Buncombe County recorded 18 to 23 fatal vehicle-bear collisions. Haywood and McDowell were close behind, recording 10 to 17 mortalities, according to WRC data. 

“NCDOT, as well as our agency, does a good job of responding to bears hit by cars and removing them, which may be why the commenter never has seen a dead bear,” Olfenbuttel said. “However, the level of mortality caused by drivers is not sufficient to cause the bear population in the Asheville area to decline or stabilize.”

Regarding reproductive control by castration or birth control, “neither are feasible or effective,” Olfenbuttel said. 

Let’s start with trying to castrate or sterilize male bears.

“Because one male can inseminate many females and because males tend to disperse widely, castration or sterilization of male bears would not be an effective strategy,” Olfenbuttel said. “One would have to sterilize almost every male bear in the county. That means trapping hundreds of male bears, which is simply not possible, as about half of bears are trap-shy, meaning they won’t go in the trap, no matter what bait you use to try to entice them.”

Also, any such effort would have to be annual, “since male bears would disperse into Buncombe County from surrounding counties to displace the sterilized male bears.”

“Another barrier is where you could trap, as there are areas with bears that you can’t place traps, partly due to lack of landowner permission or areas that have high human use,” Olfenbuttel said. “To trap as many male bears as possible, you would need to trap as many places as possible, which is not possible.”

And castration would be effective for captive animals only in controlled settings, she added.

Regarding fertility control for female bears, Olfenbuttel said the “short answer is there are no chemical fertility controls with FDA approval for female bears. Simply put, none are available for application to female black bears.”

Olfenbuttel added these points that also make fertility control difficult:

• Fertility control requires treating a large proportion of reproductive females in the population, which is extremely difficult in open populations where movement/dispersal rates are high.
•  Impacts of fertility control on the health, behavior, and population ecology of treated animals are still largely unknown.
• There are no long-lasting contraceptive agents that have been developed that avoid the repeated capture of wild animals and avoid the very high cost of re-treatment.
• terilization and fertility control would cost millions of dollars annually.

Over the years I’ve had multiple readers ask about relocating bears, and this is not practical, either. The WRC has a good explainer page on its website about this. The commission notes that its employees will not trap and relocate nuisance bears for these reasons:

• This would simply move the problem, rather than solve it. The solution is to modify your habits and prevent bears from being attracted to your home and neighborhood.
• Most conflicts do not warrant trapping. For example, a bear simply being in a neighborhood is not necessarily threatening or cause for trapping.
• In most cases, people are the cause of the problem and the best long-term solution involves removal of attractants (bird feeders, unsecured garbage) rather than destruction of the bear.
• Simply catching every bear that someone sees is not an option; we have no remote places left to relocate bears where they will not come into contact with humans.
• Relocated bears often return to the place they were originally captured.
• Catching bears is difficult, and can be dangerous for the bear, the public, and those involved in the capture. It is best to let a bear take its natural course out of the neighborhood or city.

The commission really cannot overstate how important it is to secure potential food sources for bears. These sources are called “anthropogenic foods” because they are related to us humans.

“Our urban bear study showed that due to the amount of anthropogenic foods in Asheville, Asheville residents are growing more bears — larger litter sizes, younger age of first reproduction,” Olfenbuttel said. “If anthropogenic foods were secured in Asheville and surrounding areas — i.e., remove bird feeders when bears are active, use a bear-resistant trash can, use bear-resistant trash can straps such as Trash Lock, put garbage in a secure place until morning of trash pick-up, don’t purposely feed bears — this would reduce anthropogenic foods, thus impacting reproduction and human-bear interactions.”

Reducing human-related foods would make bears act more like wild animals, which means they would be more wary of humans, Olfenbuttel said. It’s always worth mentioning the state’s “BearWise” program, which offers good rules for coexisting with bears:

• Never feed or approach bears.
• Remove bird feeders when bears are active.
• Never leave pet food outdoors.
• Clean and store grills.
• Alert neighbors to bear activity. 

Question: I called the Asheville Water Resources department in February and inquired about the Asheville water quality report. I was told it would be released to the public in April. I recently called to find out if the post-Helene results were available. The supervisor would only refer me to the pre-Helene 2024 results. When I pressed further, I was given the runaround. I know that pre-Helene annual results were always included in early spring with the water bill. Not so post-Helene. What is the water department hiding? And why, for the health of its customers, aren’t the recent detailed water testing results being released to the public?

My answer: Throughout the report, they apparently substituted the letter ‘d’ for the ‘b’ in “turbidity.” Unfortunate, that. 

Real answer: This was a bit of a misunderstanding.

Water Resources spokesperson Clay Chandler said he listened to the call my reader put into the city.

“The customer service rep got confused when the caller asked for the ‘2025’ Water Quality Report,” Chandler said via email. “The 2025 Water Quality Report won’t be issued until spring 2026. The 2024 report, which includes post-Helene results, was posted to the website in April.”

You can find it here.

Now, if you’re looking for a paper copy, you won’t find one.

“One thing that is different this year is that we didn’t print copies of the report, as a cost-savings measure,” Chandler said, noting that customers were told it is available on the website. “Our regulators at the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality allow us to either mail paper copies of the report or post it on the website. To save approximately $20,000, we didn’t produce paper copies this year.”

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Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Got a question? Send it to John Boyle at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org or 828-337-0941. His Answer Man columns appear each Tuesday and Friday. The Watchdog’s reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.

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