<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1G9wNO_1GZIFrB900" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1G9wNO_1GZIFrB900" width="976" height="650" ></figure>EMPIRE, MI -- Bear hair may be the key to better understanding Michigan's black bear population.The Friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes secured a $165,000 grant from the National Park Foundation to collect and study black bear hair in the National Lakeshore.The grant will fund a three-year study to research bear hair and scat to better understand the black bear's diet and movement within Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.The National Park Service will work with a graduate student from the University of Wisconsin to set hair snares throughout the park in areas bears are most likely to pass through.The hair snare will humanely grab hair as the bear rubs up against it without harming the animal, according to the grant.The park has been considering a black bear study for years but lacked the funding to pursue it, said Laura Ann Johnson, executive director of the Friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes."We're doing what we do best, help the [park] thrive rather than survive," Johnson said.The Friends group is a nonprofit arm of the park, which acts an independent fundraiser and volunteer base.More Black Bear News: If you see a black bear den this winter, the DNR wants to knowBlack bear and human interaction has been on the rise in Michigan.The Great Lakes State is home to an estimated 12,800 black bears with the vast majority living in the Upper Peninsula.Typically, black bears sniff out a den in October and November. However, warm weather in the Lower Peninsula have kept black bears active for longer in the season.The Michigan Department of Natural Resources has been receiving more bear calls in recent years, including reports of bears bedding in crawl spaces, sheds, garages and empty vacation homes.Within Sleeping Bear Dunes, more bears are entering campgrounds.Hair tracking will give NPS and the surrounding gateway cities better information on the population size and movement. This will inform the larger "bear aware" campaign, Johnson said."Black bears are wild animals and we want to make sure they stay that way," Johnson said. "We don't want to be training bears in a way that will cause more harm to them and us in the future."The study will also include scat retrieval for diet research.Black bears rely on tree nuts within the thick forests of Sleeping Bear Dunes but the invasive species oak wilt and beech leaf disease have been sickening and killing off the bear's primary food source.Researchers are hoping to find out if bears have changed their diet or foraging patterns to adapt to the disease.The hair research idea was among the 200 experimental proposals submitted to the National Park Foundation's inaugural innovation grant series.The National Park Foundation is the official nonprofit partner of NPS, funded through private donors. The foundation invested nearly $25 million into more than 40 parks this year through its innovation grants."National parks have always represented a bold idea, and their future depends on continued innovation," said NPF Chief Program Officer Mike Reynolds. "The National Park Foundation was inspired by the overwhelming interest from parks and park partners, and we are proud to double down on our support for their new ideas that can make their parks safer, more resilient, and more enjoyable and meaningful for the millions of people who experience them each year."Read the original article on mlive.com. Add mlive.com as a Preferred Source by clicking here.</div></body>

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EMPIRE, MI -- Bear hair may be the key to better understanding Michigan's black bear population. The Friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes secured a $165,000 grant from the National Park Foundation to collect and study black bear hair in the National Lakeshore. The grant will fund a three-year study to...

$165k grant funds Sleeping Bear Dunes black bear study on diet, movement

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EMPIRE, MI -- Bear hair may be the key to better understanding Michigan's black bear population. The Friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes secured a $165,000 gran

$165k grant funds Sleeping Bear Dunes black bear study on diet, movement

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