From observation, the lady bears and weak males avoid the fishing areas until the big males are getting stuffed, to avoid fights. If there are berries, it makes sense to eat them while waiting for the rivers to get safer. At peak spawning, there are plenty of dead fish for all but even before that the males stop eating the fish and scoop out the eggs instead.

Is there a shortage of bears? Didn't they survive the last ice age? Don't they know what's best to eat without some busybody with a duff degree telling them?

Bears and Berries

Bears that prefer berries to fish may not put on the necessary fat reserves to survive winter hibernation, especially pregnant females.

Worrying news for vegetarian earth mothers.

One take on the bear story is here

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/25/grizzly-bears-go-vegetarian-due-climate-change-choosing-berries/

It seems to be based on a one-off event in 2014 when bears were chomping berries when they'd normally be fishing. But it goes onto say that, by the linear extrapolation preferred by environmentalists, it'll be 2070 before the berry and fish 'seasons' overlap.

Still, the article gives useful tips for surviving encounters with black or brown bears, for which apparently different tactics should be adopted. Unfortunately it then says that some brown bears are black, and some black bears are brown.

mikeh. I heard the bear story some days ago. Then it was that during years favourable for berries, bears fish for salmon to a lesser effect. Unsure if this can be related to climate change - what influences growth of berries? [This year appears to be a bumper blackberry year in Norfolk with many of the different species producing larger than usual crops].