Jenna Malzahn moves with purpose as she opens Harriett’s jaws and extracts a tooth that will determine the sleeping bear’s age.
Harriett, a young female bear, is estimated to weigh 127 pounds. She appears to be healthy as she roamed the woods of Eight Mile in Mobile County before she was trapped overnight inside an 8-foot-by-4-foot cage that is large enough to temporarily hold a bear that is as big as 300 pounds. In the past two years, Malzahn has trapped 32 bears as part of Auburn’s overall black bear research. Over the past four years, 22 cubs – baby bears under age 2 – were trapped and collared. Of those, 17 have died.
“That population is growing well and is healthy,” said Todd Steury, a wildlife ecologist and assistant professor at Auburn since 2008, whoAuburn University has led the state’s study of bears since 2010, when Alabama first began receiving federal funding through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to conduct bear research. The research was organized as a way for the state to get a better understanding about the mammal’s habitats in Alabama.
“But through research, we have not identified a sustainable reproducing population except ,” Wood said. “We continuously get the comment, ‘I did not know there are black bears in Alabama.’ But we proudly remind them the black bear is the state mammal and are becoming more abundant in the state.”