Bear ambassador: Lynn Rogers advocates for human-bear coexistence

Biologist Lynn Rogers is sitting at the kitchen table in his research center when a big black bear looms in his window.

“Oh,” says Dr. Rogers casually. “There’s Jack now.”

One-Eyed Jack is a 350-pound, 24-year-old bear missing his left eye from a homeowner’s shotgun blast and with a hole in his side, probably from an old car collision. He is one of dozens of wild black bears who occasionally visit Dr. Rogers’ wildlife research center in this pine and aspen forest 13 miles southwest of Ely, Minnesota.

Jack is more regular than most. While other bears often opt for natural berries and ant nests in the forest, Jack is old and a bit stiff, and will go for the trough of cashew nuts and sunflower seeds always available here. He munches blithely as Dr. Rogers sticks his hand into the bear’s scraggly fur and feels the animal’s heartbeat – 106 beats per minute, all fine. The researcher offers several handfuls of hazelnuts, a beary treat, which Jack gently licks from his cupped hands.

Dr. Rogers has spent his life with bears. For decades he walked through the woods alongside wild black bears, hanging out as they ate, and even sleeping next to them. He earned their trust, and has devoted his career to trying to convince the public to see them as gentle creatures – to replace fear with empathy and to challenge persistent misconceptions. 

“My life is trying to spread the truth of the bears,” he says. “People grow up the same way I did: seeing the outdoor magazines – fear sells. The covers showed bears in the most ferocious way, hitting somebody and the evil look on the face, evil eyes. [People] interpret everything out of fear. If they do meet a bear, any sound it makes is a growl. If it looks at you, it’s eyeing you.”

For the record, Dr. Rogers says a bear has never growled at him, even when he poked and prodded it. Lots of huffing, teeth clacking, but no growls.

Compassion and controversy

His devotion to peaceful coexistence speaks of a responsibility fed by compassion. Both black bear and human populations have grown significantly, and as each encroaches on the other’s habitat, encounters have grown. That makes his cause controversial and has earned him the wrath of state and federal officials.

Dr. Rogers has been investigated, charged with crimes, and denied the permits for his research. Critics have smeared his name, stripped his research permits, and seized bears that he was studying.

Dr. Rogers contends his work threatened other researchers and challenged the validity of public campaigns warning about the danger of bears.

“The deeper I got into stuff, the more my findings conflicted with conventional wisdom, and the stuff that wildlife biologists had believed and been teaching the public as fact for years,” he says. “Then they see me doing something that just doesn’t fit any of that at all. And still having all my fingers and toes.”

He beat all the charges. Along the way, he earned praise from famed chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall, to whom he is often compared, and renowned Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson. Dr. Rogers was named Minnesota’s “Environmental Hero” in 1996, collected research commendations, starred in a dozen nature documentaries, and grew a fiercely loyal following.

He built a nonprofit bear center in Ely that draws 30,000 visitors each year, and works at his own Wildlife Research Institute, offering bear-immersive field workshops attended by people from all over the world.

“We like to have the bears teach the people,” says Lorie Kennedy, who works with Dr. Rogers and helps teach the classes. Bears “win people over because they see how gentle they really are.”

Early bear encounters

The first time Dr. Rogers encountered a bear he thought it might be his last.

As a teenager on a fishing trip in Upper Michigan, he threw his blankets on the ground to sleep outside the tent. “I just wanted to hear all the sounds because I was deep into birds,” he recalls.

“And then I heard footsteps in the darkness. Big. I could tell from the footsteps.

“Big sniffing,” – he inhales mightily to demonstrate – “not some little teeny animal.

“I froze in fear when I felt it sniff my feet. And then it sniffed its way up to my face and was sniffing through the blanket. And I just laid there perfectly still.”

The biologist, a relentless storyteller, pauses for effect. “And the bear went off and tipped over a garbage can.”

Dr. Rogers is quick to note that was a long time ago. He is 83, he reminds visitors. His red hair has turned wispy and white and, he says, it’s getting harder for him to get back up after kneeling down to commune with a bear nose to nose. Yet he persists. As to his career accomplishments, he demurs with a Midwesterner’s laconic drawl, “Well, I’m not done yet.”

But he allows some retrospection. He believes he has helped create more humane research methods, created safer spaces for black bears, and exposed thousands of people to a side of bears they don’t expect. He says he has pushed back against a one-sided view of the relationship between two species: humans and bears.

“I was just learning stuff that people thought was not possible,” he says.

Dr. Rogers’ belief in the fiction of fierce black bears was earned in the face of encounters that others might describe as frightening.

He started off as an intern at Michigan State University helping “dart” bears with tranquilizers and tag them for study. One day he saw a drugged bear cub that had fled up a tree fall to its death when it lost consciousness. The young Mr. Rogers began scampering up the trees after bears, lassoing them as they got sleepy, and gently lowering them to the ground.

“Some of the bears I was capturing were nuisance bears. And I’d hear people’s stories about this rogue bear with its eyes shining out of the darkness and how dangerous they are. But what they were afraid of is more what they were afraid the bear would do, [rather] than what it really did.”

As he was collecting cubs for study, “the mother bears would charge me sometimes,” he says. “And I’d stand up and yell, all ferocious, and they’d stop 20 feet away.” He soon learned that a charging bear was a bluffing bear.

A kinder, gentler researcher

The fearlessness and compassion of the intern were recognized by prominent researcher Albert Erickson, who offered Dr. Rogers a scholarship at the University of Minnesota that turned into advanced degrees in biology, and eventually into a job with the U.S. Forest Service. He became noted for his maverick ways.

“All of my research has been to try new things to learn new things and to find kinder, gentler ways of doing research,” Dr. Rogers says. “Eventually, I even eliminated tranquilizers.”

Soon, Dr. Rogers was standing his ground in the face of the most bellicose bears. They would huff and huff, stamp their feet, and charge to within a few feet of him. Sometimes they would swipe a bush or tree limb menacingly to show they meant business.

They never did.

“The more ferocious they look, the more you know that is just talk,” he says.

He started following them, a 6-foot bearded biologist loping along with them, calling, “Here bear, here bear. It’s me bear.” He hung out while they foraged in the forest, and eventually even bedded down to sleep next to them.

He took meticulous notes on what the bears did, what they ate, how they behaved, and he collected their feces in plastic bags for samples. His notes were the first intimate research into the social lives of wild bears, and began earning him fame.

Dr. Rogers contends that bears lash out defensively mostly when they are feeling threatened by humans – it is the bear that is afraid of the human. When he proved himself unthreatening, the bears tolerated his presence. “The less a bear fears a person the less defensive it becomes,” he argues.

He concedes, “People are killed. There’s about 900,000 black bears in North America, and only about one person – if that – gets killed per year. So that comes out to one out of about a million kill somebody.”

When black bears attack

A 2011 study by Stephen Herrero found 63 fatalities by black bears in North America between 1900 and 2009, though other counts show a somewhat higher rate – 31 since 2000. Most of the deadly attacks occur in deep woods by male bears, sometimes stressed for food.

But nonfatal attacks show a different pattern, according to a study published last year of the 210 confirmed nonfatal injuries by black bears in the United States between 2000 and 2017, done by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and in Alaska. These injuries often occurred when bears accustomed to humans came in inadvertent contact with people. In 40% of the cases, the study found, women walking dogs tried to interfere when their dogs harassed a female bear, and the humans were injured – some seriously, some not. “Dogs [especially off leash] can trigger defensive attacks by black bears,” the study says.

Most researchers characterize black bear attacks as “rare.” Dr. Rogers contends the incidence is so small it should not color our view of all black bears. “The answer to just about any question about bear [behavior] is that ‘some do, and some don’t,’” he says.

And he rejects the axiom that black bear mothers are ferocious in protecting their cubs. In 2010 he demonstrated his belief by climbing into a bear den to install a web camera. The video feed was shown daily in hundreds of schools and viewed in 132 countries, he says. It topped Google and Yahoo search results when mother Lily gave birth to two cubs. Dr. Rogers installed other “den cams,” regularly climbing in with mothers and cubs, ignoring the occasional bluffing lunges.

But his methods became too much for his superiors. Wildlife agencies have been held legally responsible for mitigating the risk of attacks, and have long-standing programs aimed at convincing the public to avoid bears, yet here was a guy crawling into bear dens, feeding bears by hand, and putting radio collars on them while they were awake.

Conflicts with wildlife officials

In 1991 Dr. Rogers documented the importance of Minnesota’s iconic white pine to bears and other wildlife, and challenged the government to stop logging licenses for this species. This came with the growing spotlight on his advocacy of bears, and the U.S. Forest Service had had enough. He was brought up on several alleged administrative violations and criminally charged with euthanizing two orphaned bear cubs. Dr. Rogers says they would have died without their mother, and notes his research permit allowed him to do what he did. After years of bureaucratic and court battles, Dr. Rogers agreed to leave the U.S. Forest Service in 1993 after 17 years in return for a clean record and his full pension rights.

His conflicts with state authorities, though, continued. His message of tolerance for bears – and a more nuanced understanding of human and bear safety – cut into the state’s effort to boost bear hunting licenses and its warnings to be cautious around bears. On two occasions, the state succeeded in revoking his collaring permit, and he still cannot put radio collars on bears.

“The problems come when my work conflicts with their economic goals, and it also comes when it conflicts with their beliefs and what they’ve been teaching the public,” Dr. Rogers says.

Dave Olfelt, director of the Division of Fish and Wildlife for Minnesota, notes that Dr. Rogers had permits to collar bears for 14 years. But the bears that became accustomed to coming to Dr. Rogers’ feeding station prompted complaints from some neighbors.

“We think encouraging feeding increases the likelihood of negative interactions” with people, Mr. Olfelt says in a phone interview. “We still don’t think it’s a good idea to feed bears. They are big, wild animals.”

Mr. Olfelt says the state agency also felt Dr. Rogers did not publish enough research to warrant his continued research permit, a contention Dr. Rogers adamantly disputes.

Still, the standard advice on government websites, camping brochures, and signs in wilderness parks is to take precautions to avoid bears. Bears that frequent neighborhoods or campsites may be labeled nuisance bears and relocated or killed.

Dr. Rogers seeks more honest communication about bears to the public. He says too many wildlife managers think “bears with greater contact with people would be more likely to attack and kill people. No data supports that,” he contends.

In fact, Dr. Rogers has long offered food to bears he studies, and his research cabin in Minnesota draws bears that feed at his ever-full trays of nuts and seeds.

He says his fed bears are more – not less – tolerant of people.

John Hechtel, a wildlife biologist in Alaska who spent nearly 30 years with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and is prominent in international bear conservation groups, says much of Dr. Rogers’ work is respected by bear managers and biologists.

“He knows a lot about their body language and behavior. But I think he has chosen to simplify the messaging to, black bears aren’t dangerous,” Mr. Hechtel says by phone from Fairbanks.

“I agree that the relative danger of bears, black bears especially, is low. But it’s not like it doesn’t happen,” he says. “There’s a lot of people who need a lot less fear of bears, but there’s some people who need a bit more. My inbox and my social media feed is full of stuff about people being dumb around wild animals.”

Joel Zachry, a biologist who led wilderness groups in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Alaska for more than 40 years and served as president of two bear conservation groups, also credits Dr. Rogers for dispelling some myths about black bears.

But he notes, “Lynn Rogers has always been controversial among most bear people because bears are wild animals, and that element never leaves.” 

Dr. Rogers “no doubt has a special relationship with some of those animals, but when that wild element expresses itself someone is going to be hurt.”

Dr. Rogers says he was never intentionally injured by a bear, but he concedes he’s been bruised and scratched. He downplays one incident in which he acknowledges he was “full of fear.” A female bear charged and did not stop, and Dr. Rogers tripped. With the bear standing over him, Dr. Rogers says he kicked at the bear’s throat and punched her in the head. Then, as “she was deciding what to do, I laid still so I was not a threat.” The standoff simply ended, and the bear lumbered back to her cubs.

A community of tolerance

Dr. Rogers found a community accepting of his methods in Eagles Nest, a sparsely populated township nestled against the sprawling Superior National Forest in northern Minnesota. A handful of people who live in this small community are not scared of their wild neighbors, and for decades have left food for the bears.

J.M. Barnish moved there for the summers from Dallas, then quit her job in corporate finance, and now cooks for Dr. Rogers’ workshop classes as a volunteer. She and her husband feed bears in the back of their 11-acre home.

“I feel the most in line with everything in what’s called ‘the universe’ in the presence of a black bear,” says Ms. Barnish. “That’s my happy place.”

At Eagles Nest, Dr. Rogers established the Wildlife Research Institute and built a comfortable, three-story cabin in the woods. He began offering “field research” classes in summers to people interested in learning more about the bears. For $2,500, his participants can sleep in dorm rooms at his research center, learn his theories about bears, and greet and feed any of the wild bears like Jack that wander to his station.

“My biggest goal is education,” he says. In 2007, he took that philosophy a step further. He and his wife, Donna, borrowed money against their home and founded the North American Bear Center just outside Ely. “He needed a place to put his data. And I knew people would be interested,” says Ms. Rogers. She was right. 

In the sprawling center visitors wander among stuffed animals and hundreds of photos and videos, and read bite-size explanations of bear life – and the text and photos are almost all Dr. Rogers’, who is considered one of the top nature photographers in the state. In addition, the center has four rescue bears, formerly captive animals that were headed for execution. They live in a wooded 2½-acre enclosure and feed in a communal area viewable from the center.

“This is great,” says Cindy Hamaker, visiting on a recent day with her husband, Dean, from Siren, Wisconsin. “We see a lot of bears where we live, but we learned some things here.”

Dr. Rogers says he is pleased to have helped reform the image of bears, but he admits it is a difficult goal. “It’s hard for people to overcome their fears,” he says. “I think that we have a primordial fear of any animal that has bigger teeth.”

He proudly shows off pictures on the research center walls of his two daughters, before they were 10 years old, gaily feeding and dancing with bears. That is coexistence, he says. He is untroubled: “I knew there was no danger to it whatsoever.”