LAKE PLACID – If you live in the Adirondacks, you live with black bears.

The large, four-legged mammals don’t make the best neighbors, though. They break into cars, tear open trash cans and destroy bird feeders searching for easy meals.

Increased black bear sightings in Lake Placid this summer have raised concerns for state Department of Environmental Conservation officials, who held a seminar last week to discuss ways to better inform the public on how to prevent attracting bears.

“Bears are omnivores, so they eat anything any other mammal can eat,” said DEC wildlife technician Ben Tabor. “They eat berries when the berries are ripe and apples when the apples are ripe. When the natural foods aren’t in season or are in a lull, you’ll see them looking for human-generated food, like garbage and bird seed.”

Tabor said that’s why it’s important to make human food difficult to obtain, which forces bears to seek out other, more natural food sources. He warned that it’s rare for a single bear to poke around an area inhabited by humans.

“If you have one bear, you have four bears,” Tabor said. “In Lake Placid, there’s at least six bears.”

Tabor said there are bear reports everywhere in the Adirondack Park, but more bear sightings have been reported in Lake Placid this summer than in the last 10 years.

“It really became noticeable as the summer went on,” Tabor said. “We had bears getting into dumpsters right on Main Street.”

There were so many reports the DEC sent officers to the village to deal with bear complaints an average of three nights a week. Sometimes those reports were for property damage; other times they were from residents complaining because bears dragged garbage from an adjacent restaurant into their lawns.

“That’s something that this goes beyond bears,” Tabor said. This is a neighbor dispute. Residents against businesses is something we hate to be in between, so we’d rather get everybody together to talk about it so we can work it out.”

Bears that become used to humans can be a danger to themselves and people.

When bears learn they can get an easy meal, it becomes a challenge to chase them away. Making loud noises is only a temporary fix – they usually just return as soon as people leave – and things like rubber bullets have a similar effect. Most bears learn to shake off the sting and continue foraging.

Tabor said relocating a nuisance bear doesn’t work, either. For one thing, most neighboring municipalities aren’t excited about a bear that doesn’t fear people being dropped off in their back yards. Also, bears can cover a lot of ground.

Tabor said one bear that was tagged in the High Peaks was spotted in Long Lake, Newcomb and Crown Point. By the time it returned to the High Peaks, it had covered about 450 square miles – roughly three-quarters of the 6-million-acre Adirondack Park – in two weeks.

“Any bear over 3 years old that we release comes right back,” Tabor said. “The only time they don’t come back is if they get hit in the road, they get shot by a hunter, or they find a better food source on the way back.”

The answer, then, is to dissuade bears from pillaging cars and dumpsters, which could require public outreach.

Town of Webb Councilwoman Kate Russell explained how bears became a problem in Old Forge.

“Our other trash cans that we had were wood,” Russell said. “The bears were knocking them over, ripping them right open and tearing them to pieces. We needed to put forth an effort as the town to help with the problem.”

Not only were bears and deer getting into the garbage cans, but the DEC was ticketing the town for feeding wildlife. People there banded together and made a concerted effort to inform the public on how to become a “bear smart” community.

That included creating posters detailing how to properly store food and running a similar ad at the Strand Theatre before movies.

The town also bought 14 bear-proof garbage and recycling cans, which are now located throughout the village, at $1,235 apiece using an $18,000 state Main Street grant.

The plan has worked so far. Russell said there is always going to be someone who leaves a take-out container in his or her car, but overall bear activity has decreased drastically.

“Nothing is 100 percent bear-proof, but has this been a wise investment? Yes it has,” Russell said. “What we learned is this is really a partnership. It’s a partnership between town agencies, between state agencies, business owners and residents. It takes all four groups to take responsibility and work together to address this problem.”

Zoe Smith, who directs the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Adirondack program, said the organization would get involved by visiting various government meetings and trying to drum up support for educating people about bear-human relationships in the Park.

“The next logical step is to get more people involved in the conversation and build a local, grass roots movement,” Smith said. “It really needs to come from the community up. The resources are out there; it’s just a matter of getting the will of the community to come together.”

To get involved with the human-bear conversation, contact DEC public outreach coordinator Emily Kilburn at emily.kilburn@dec.ny.gov or Smith at zsmith@wcs.org.