One way to ensure we don't get food forests is if we let the idea of black bears, or anything else, stop us trying to plant food forests. One thing I’m having to accept is that in nature only a fraction of trees survive to maturity, and bears are part of the thinning crew. They seem to particularly like stripping conifers and alders between 4-12” (or 10-30cm) thick. These happen to be over abundant ladder fuels in many western forests. It is a concern thought that fruit trees do spend much of their lives in that size range.
As my year old planting matures, i intend to key an ear open for hunter friends’ who sometimes have to kill a problem bear, and make
Sepp Holzer style bear bone sauce with it.. Its almost always due to accessible garbage or poorly stored food, often by neighbors who habituate them. This is vastly more likely to be make a problem bear than fruit trees, as human food has been engineered to seduce us with much denser calories, proteins, salts, sugars and fats than any natural food. Only a really loaded tree or shrub would compare, but it would still differ from human food garbage in its effect on the bear’s behavior. Bears identify the human sources of food garbage, and then go to other human occupied areas because its associated with their food-crack. They will definitely remember in their extensive and detailed mental food map where a fruit tree is, but that will be lore akin to how it knows every wild plum and berry bush in its territory. Bears have been known to learn to shimmy on their backs along vineyard rows while raking grape clusters into their mouths. Thats gotta suck for the farmer, but these bears don’t then break into the farmers home to raid their pantry like they do after getting a taste of that sweet sweet food garbage just outside the house, which they can smell every item inside, and much of it smells like an even more voluminous, fresher and tastier version of that food garbage!
Anyhow, i may have to harvest a bear one day, and my dogs will help me eat it all, but I plan on using livestock guardian dogs and fencing to protect what i value most to prevent that if possible. Some of what I plant will inevitably go to wildlife, which I intend to plan to accept getting at least 1/3 in exchange for their ecological services, and just because they are my neighbors who were here first.
Good luck to you. I say plant on, just look for bulk rootstock and scion
wood that you can graft onto for 10% the cost of pregrafted trees. Its not as
local or climate analogous for you, but Burnt Ridge Nursery is an amazing place, and has served me well for this.
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