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Hungry Bear Blamed for Ruining Apple Tree

Posted on: Wednesday, 8 September 2004, 06:00 CDT

JUNEAU, Alaska - A family is mourning the loss of a beloved apple tree but they believe they know who the culprit was: a hungry brown bear. "There is a bear out there that will rip a tree down," Lavena Sargent said Tuesday morning, a day after returning from a caribou hunting trip.

"It wasn't the world's best apple tree," she said. But at the end of a warm and sunny summer, it was bearing full-size apples for the first time and she was looking forward to picking them.

Her family had nurtured the tree for 20 years, she told the Juneau Empire. It was "the family tree," she said, though she and her mother, Evelyn Reeves, who lives next door, disagree about who planted it.

Reeves said she envisioned an autumn of baked apples and pie.

"It was heavy with apples," said Reeves. "We waited and waited and waited."

Then something "tore the tree all to heck," she said.

She believes the culprit was one large brown bear she's seen in the area. In previous years, black bears have visited her yard, she said, but this year the neighborhood appears to be a brown bear's turf.

Neil Barten, area wildlife biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said he feels sorry for Sargent but that apple trees attract bears.

Joe Orsi, who has grown apples for about 10 years, offered Sargent some of his crop. He said it didn't take long to learn that apple trees attract bears.

"I've got an electric fence," said Orsi. "It works."

He has about 25 trees bearing fruit this fall.

Porcupines will climb trees for apples and deer may nibble, but bears break off branches, he said. He has seen evidence of bears eating them directly off of the tree, leaving only the stem.

Sargent said there was no trace of the apples that had been so plentiful on her tree, except for one she found under a log in a brook. Fresh bear droppings leave little doubt about the culprit.

Sargent said she will talk to gardeners about saving the tree but she doesn't expect it will ever bear fruit.

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