TOWNSEND, Tenn. — East Tennessee's bear rescue is asking for people to start securing their trash, put away their bird feeders and keep their vehicles locked if they live near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Appalachian Bear Rescue said 20 bears have been euthanized in Tennessee this year, due to issues with people. It said it has 26 orphaned cubs it's taking care of, and 10 of them are from mothers who've been euthanized. Another 11 cubs came to the rescue after their mother was hit by a vehicle, or after a cub was hit by a vehicle itself.
Over the past year, the rescue has taken in a total of 31 cubs. Greg Greico, the operations manager, said typically the rescue takes in a large number of cubs if there are issues with a food crop, but that's not the issue this year.
Instead, he said people are leaving out food and feeding the animals, causing them to lose their fear of humans.
"They'll say, 'I've never seen a bird get into my bird feeder,' then a bear does get to their bird feeder," Greico said. "Then they take it down, but the bear doesn't leave."
Greico said people also feed feral cats, which can attract bears.
"They just say they forget to lock their car, they forget to keep their trash inside," he said. "They say it's a lot of excuses, but what we hear is it's not important enough to do these things, in our opinion, it's not important enough to keep our bears safe."
Greico took 10News around Townsend to take a look at where he said bears had recently gotten into trash receptacles.
He also showed 10News fresh bear prints on the sides of dumpsters and dumpsters that have protections against bears installed, but not in use.
"There are few consequences (for humans) other than property damage or injury," he said. "Unfortunately in the majority of the state of Tennessee, outside of a tiny little ordinance in Gatlinburg that doesn't even cover all of Gatlinburg, there is no fine or penalty, no illegality at all for leaving trash or bear attractants out."
Greico said often when a bear has shown it's lost a fear of humans, then authorities have to euthanize it.
"If there is the thought that this bear is posing a threat to human safety, if it's taking food out of people's hands, if it's going into cars and going into houses, that's the line in the sand," he said.