Found this article about bears...
Feeding bears a sure invitation to trouble in paradise
Daytona Beach News Journal, 10/22/2009
Here's a news flash: Florida black bears do den in the winter and prepare for the cooler temperatures by loading up on calories. That's why we're hearing and reading about bears in neighborhoods, encountering humans more than during other times of the year. Bears are eating machines during autumn.
From now until sometime in December, most of our bears will be out foraging for whatever they can find: berries, bugs, acorns and our garbage, if it's available. They'll also devour cat and dog food if left out in the open.
This feeding craze is called hyperphagia. Black bears forage for up to 18 hours a day, sometimes consuming 20,000 calories. The black bear may seem slow, but bears are pretty smart. Why bother with the berry bush, when the remnants of last night's pizza sit tantalizingly available in an unsecured garbage can brought out to the curb the night before garbage pickup? No wonder black bears wander into neighborhoods. The dog food out on the screened porch at the neighbor's house is going to provide many more calories than the small acorns in the backyard.
Easy pickings, for sure; but is it good for the bear? Is it good for us? The answer to both questions is an emphatic "NO." Bears want to and should be in the wild, where they will find the food they need for the winter months. And we certainly will be better off without a large wild animal wandering near our children and our pets.
Sometimes folks refer to human-bear conflicts as the "bear problem." As I see it, bears don't have a problem -- they just have a natural instinct to load up on food. In fact, I admire their resourcefulness in finding the easiest source by using their finely tuned sense of smell. Anything from grease to scented candles can attract the bear, and an unsecured garbage can is an easy target.
Today, 2,500 to 3,000 bears roam Florida, but the species remains threatened. While habitat loss and fragmentation are well-documented in Florida, there are still wild areas for bears to roam. Bears will stay in the woods, if there is no reason to come out.
While wildlife-resistant containers are an excellent tool in reducing conflicts, the cans are expensive, and they are often not available for individual purchase. It falls to the waste-service provider to take on those extra costs to offer some relief to their customers. In Franklin County in the Panhandle, Waste Pro voluntarily ordered the wildlife-resistant cans and began distributing them to interested residents for a small monthly fee. We're hoping other waste-service providers around the state will follow their example.
In residential neighborhoods where food is easy to get, residents face a two-fold problem. They are responsible for cleaning up the mess made by the wildlife, and they face close encounters.
You can minimize or eliminate these problems by securing attractants such as garbage in wildlife-resistant containers and by removing or cleaning up other attractants in the yard.
The FWC is working with waste-service providers, such as Waste Pro, across the state to launch cost-effective solutions to this shared problem.
For more information on wildlife-resistant containers and to find out what you can do to avoid bear conflicts, go to MyFWC.com/Bear. Call your local waste-service provider and ask the company to provide the cans that will help keep bears where they belong -- in the wild.
Barreto is chairman of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
