On July 1, Mother Nature reminded us who’s in charge. Most of our trails are in good condition except for a few spots at the Mink Brook Nature Preserve – two blow-downs on the Trout Brook Trail and a small missing bridge on the Sachem Connector Trail. At Slade Brook, trails are clear and the flood actually improved the lower falls by scouring the ledge. Reports are not yet in for the Mayor-Niles Forest or Tunis Brook Mill Lot. If you’d like to help with trail restoration, please get in touch.
4th Annual Hanover Trails Challenge!
Registration is now open for the Hanover Trails Challenge, a do-at-your-own pace hiking challenge for all ages. HTC runs until FallFest, and completed booklets are entered into a raffle! Sign up today through Hanover Parks & Rec here.
Mark your calendar – historic Wolfeboro Rd East – July 15
Conditions were too wet (and cold and downright nasty) for Part II of our Wolfeboro Road pilgrimage back in May. We’ve set a new date: Saturday, July 15, rain date Sunday 7/16, 10-3pm. DETAILS
Mink the Bear update
Due to the response from the public (including many from out-of-state) and discussions between Governor Sununu and local, state and federal bear experts, this bear family is slated to be relocated. The three cubs have now been released in the North Country, after being tagged to help identify them should they return. The mother bear, pictured here in 2016, has yet to be relocated. We’re grateful to NH Fish & Game and USDA Wildlife Services for sharing their experience with Upper Valley communities and for being such responsive stewards of our wildlife and natural resources. The Hanover Conservancy looks forward to working with the Town of Hanover on an ordinance to help eliminate food attractants. We will continue our education efforts on how to be a safe neighbor of our many wonderful natural areas.
From Bear and Human Conflicts – A Need for Change:
If you find [this issue] provoking, please lend your support and assistance. Follow the Something’s Bruin guidelines. Talk to your friends and neighbors and encourage them to be proactive in preventing conflicts with bears. Get active within your community and work for change. Change may be hard but it is not impossible. It’s our own human behavior that creates these conflicts, and therefore it is our own behavior that needs to be modified. (read full article here) -Andrew Timmins, NH Fish & Game Bear Biologist
About those bears…
The Hanover Conservancy has worked hard for many, many years to educate the Hanover community about how to co-exist with native wildlife, including the bears that, for generations, have occupied a home range near downtown and Mink Brook. We’ve sponsored programs by a variety of bear experts, blanketed inboxes with repeated pleas to take in birdfeeders, stuffed flyers in doors, posted signs, and sought help from the town and state. We organized a meeting with these experts and, most recently, sought volunteers to help with “bear hazing” to try to deter the bears from approaching homes in a last-ditch effort to stave off the inevitable.
Despite these efforts and those of many concerned neighbors, a bounty of birdfeeders, unsecured trash, and other inappropriate food sources remained available, leading the mother bear to teach her cubs to seek these rather than wild foods. The result is cubs that are twice the size they should be for their age, with no fear of humans or concept of bear/human boundaries. Much as we’d like to imagine that a different future could await bears that think it’s okay to help themselves to brownies on a kitchen counter, there is, unfortunately, no “Bear-Anon” to rehabilitate a bear that has strayed from its wild roots. And it is not the bears’ fault.
The bears will ultimately pay the price for human mistakes that are forcing state biologists to trap and euthanize the mother and her cubs. Nobody wants that fate for them, but with such unnatural habits, the bears cannot be released elsewhere. They would either continue their dangerous ways in their new home or would find their way back to Hanover after being driven out by bears already living there. There is no other place a bear gone bad can go.
When one Hanover neighborhood decided to clean up its bear attractants and got serious about it, the bears stopped visiting, according to deputy fire chief Mike Hinsley, who has diligently scouted the situation. Bear-proof trash containers, taking in birdfeeders when bears emerge in spring, and confining access to compost are all sensible solutions. We strongly support a town-wide ordinance requiring responsible management of trash and other bear attractants.
In the meantime, we recognize that there is excellent bear habitat in our area – Indian Ridge, Velvet Rocks, and stream corridors – and that it’s only a matter of time before a new bear discovers the recently-vacated territory in Hanover. We hope this time the bear receives a different welcome, from a community that has united to help it remain wild and free.
Ferns of Moose Mountain
Join us on June 3rd from 1-3 for an introduction to Moose Mountain’s lush spring ferns. Botanists of all ages and levels welcome!
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