NLT & JCC are please to welcome back Felicia Ortner, a Connecticut Master Wildlife Conservationist, to give a talk about bears and help dispel common misunderstandings. Felicia delivered a presentation on Bears in Sherman last April

Black Bear in northern Sherman, Summer 2013   Photo by Dennis Larkin

to a standing-room only crowd. The DEP states that the black bear is seldom aggressive toward humans. Learn more about the black bear and how to take precautions so as not to attract the bears to your trash cans, beehives and bird feeders.

Felicia has been a bear enthusiast for over 25 years. She has studied bear's life style, physiology, behavior and natural history through books, journals, workshops, and lectures. In the mid 1990's Felicia became a Docent at Connecticut's Beardsley Zoo and turned her passion for learning about bears into a passion for teaching about them. She developed an education program called the Bear Reality and expanded her audience from Zoo visitors to libraries, schools, nature centers, scouts and more. In 2002, she completed the CT DEP's Master Wildlife Conservationist program.
 
With the populations of Black Bear increasing through our state, Felicia hopes, "through outreach and education that these magnificent creatures will become better understood, we will learn to respect them instead of fear them and a strategy of coexistence with humans and bears is in the future".

Jewish Community Center is located at 9 Route 39 South, Sherman, Ct.  For more information please call the JCC at 355-8050 or NLT at 354-0260.