The black bears are coming! The black bears are coming!

Pella Wildlife Company founder Ron De Armond wants to spread the word about the habits of black bears.  So he brought along two black bear cubs to his speech Tuesday night at Luther College.  But De Armond waited until the end of his speech to bring in the black bears: "I know no one would pay any attention to me once the bears come in," he joked.

The very large crowd jammed into room 206 of Valders Hall got what they wanted--a look at live black bears--but they also got a chance to learn more about the bears.  De Armond gave the program because he's predicting sightings of black bears in Winneshiek County will become annual occurrences.

That's because management practices in Wisconsin and Minnesota have resulted in large, stable populations there.  So when younger bears start to look for food, they're tempted to leave the competition for food and habitat in Minnesota and Wisconsin and head to Northeast Iowa, where there is plenty of forest land for cover and plenty of acorns and other nuts, fruit and insects--food that makes up 90 percent of the diet of black bears.

So with black bear encounters probably becoming more frequent in Winneshiek County, De Armond wants to make sure people respond appropriately.  First of all, black bears are not aggressive, except if you happen to get between a mama bear and her cubs.  In that case, De Armond says you should NOT take the oft-quoted advice to climb a tree or play dead.  Instead, De Armond says you should make a lot of noise and scare off the black bear--which is not interested in an encounter.

Only 51 people have been killed by a black bear in the last 110 years--an average of just one death in two years (a figure that is much lower than the number of people killed by bee stings each year).  But De Armond adds "I'm totally amazed that number isn't higher."  That's because people sometimes give food to black bears.  And once they do that, the black bears will return time and time again--and will want more food.

"Let's not lose bears because of our faults," De Armond urged the audience, telling the group "A Fed Bear is a Dead Bear."  He says people should make sure they put their garbage out on the day of pickup--not earlier.  He also urges them to clean their barbeque grills and take bird feeders down during spring and fall when black bears might be on the move.

A huge crowd attended the presentation