Sierra Club - Miami Group

Bear Teaching Suggestions

Most students have grown up with bears such as "Smokey the Bear" or a favorite Teddy Bear and so while they have very little knowledge of the needs of real bears they are easily recognized by all.

Suggestions For All Ages

1. Categories of Food: Bears are omnivores. Students of all ages can be taught this word. They will understand what it means when they put the wide variety of meat and plant foods Florida Black Bears eat into categories.

Food can be discussed and put in vegetable or animal categories. Besides the foods listed on the first page bears also eat colonial insects such as carpenter ants, termites ants, honey bee larva and grubs.. They also eat yellow jackets, walking sticks, and small wild pigs and deer when they can catch them. In north Florida the most commonly eaten vertebrate are armadillos and ground squirrels. They eat seasonal fruits such as blueberries and huckleberries, Bears have a reputation for liking honey but they really are attracted to the honey bee larva and bees are their most frequently eaten insect.

Foods can be broken down into finer categories when older students add the categories of insects, colonial insects, vertebrates, and seasonal fruits. Bears eat between 11-18 pounds a day depending on the size of the bear. They eat at night or early in the morning. Special Project for Older Students Black bear habitat is also good habitat for honeybees. Florida is a large producer of honey and bear raids on apiaries can result in serious economic damage to a beekeeper. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission provides technical assistance to beekeepers to keep bears out without injuring the animal. How does this work and is it successful?

2. Umbrella Species: Bears are known as an umbrella species. This means that when bear habitat is preserved other species of endangered and threatened plants and animals that live in that area will be preserved.

Special Project for Older Students: Using a map of Florida color in the five areas of greatest bear distribution. They are: Big Cypress National Preserve., Apalachicola National Forest, Osceola National Forest, Ocala/Wekiva River Basin, and Elgin Air Force Base. Information on endangered plants and animals can be obtained from The Fla. Fish and Game Commission and plotted on the map.

3. Threats to Bears: Roads are considered the leading known cause of Florida bear mortality. High-speed paved roads have increased yearly and with them bear deaths. Bears are continually threatened by road widening projects through their habitat. Bear habitat is often fragmented by roads and commercial and urban development leaving individuals isolated from their food, shelter and mates. The result is road kills. Bears can run 30mph for a short distance but the headlights of fast moving cars confuse them and they get hit.

Special Project for Older Students Using a map of Florida, plot the five areas listed in Number 2 above and then show the main highways that transit them. Plot the areas of greatest bear deaths by cars (Fla. Fish & Game Commission.)

Bears in the Curriculum

 Taken from the Florida Bear, A Publication of the Habitat for Bears Campaign. Published by Habitat for Bears, 1101 14th St., N.W., Suite 1400, Washington, DC 20005. Black Bear Curriculum Available This Fall

Florida elementary school students can look forward to learning about Florida black bears in their classrooms this fall. A ten-lesson curriculum for students in grades three through seven, written by environmental education professor Dr. Linda Jones, will be available in late fall.

The curriculum is the first to focus on a single charismatic species in the context of broader ecological concepts. It is also designed to reinforce students' learning across a broad range of subjects and skills.

The wealth of background information and exciting hands-on-activities in these lessons are designed to raise the students' awareness of the bear's importance as an umbrella species and of the need to actively work to protect and conserve their number.

For more information or to attend an upcoming training workshop, call Christine Small at 352-735-6909 or Carrie Hamby at 850-488-4679.

Florida Bear is the free newsletter of the Habitat for Bears Campaign and can be subscribed to by contacting the address given above.

Other Sources:

For older students: The Bear Den http://www.excite.sfu.ca/projects/exwork/best/bearden/black.htm

For younger students: The Cub Den
http://www.excite.sfu.ca/projects/exwork/best/bearden/cubden.htm

http://www.malloryswamp.org/Wildlife/wildlife.html
http://www.nsis.org/wildlife/mamm/bear.html
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/scripts/htmlgen.exe?body&DOCUMENT_UW055

http://library.northernlight.com/BM199901130100220006.html?cb=0&sc=0
(Christian Science Monitor article on request for status change.)

http://esther.la.asu. edu/personnel/ramsey/bears.html (This is a very complete listing of books on bears.)

http://m237.arc.leon.k12.fl.us/~beck/beckbearlinks.html (The best site for links to all bear sites on the internet.)

 - Pat Suiter,

Miami Group Education Committee