OLD FORGE, N.Y. — With their normal summer diet of greens and berries shriveled by summer heat or drought in many spots nationwide, hungry bears are rummaging through garbage, ripping through screens and crawling into cars in search of sustenance.
In the Adirondack Mountain village of Old Forge in northern New York state, a black bear clawed through the wall of a candy store on Main Street last week; another one locked itself in a minivan and shredded the interior in a frantic struggle to escape, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
“We’ve been here 17 years and never had a problem with bears,” said Roslyn Starer, who runs the Candy Cottage in Old Forge with her son, Larry. “But it’s been so dry the normal foods in the woods just aren’t growing. So they’re coming into town.”
Starer came to the shop one morning to find a bear had ripped a big hole in the wall. “If it had gone much further it would have gotten into the shop, and the damage would have been devastating,” she said.
This summer’s bear troubles aren’t isolated to New York. In eastern Kentucky, the U.S. Forest Service closed two campgrounds for a weekend at the end of July because of bears raiding picnic baskets and coolers. Biologists blamed the drought-related berry shortage.