WENATCHEE – A new U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service trailer designed to help people learn more about black bears and grizzly bears recently toured the state, and will be stored in Wenatchee for future travels.

The 17-foot trailer is covered with pictures and descriptions, and tends to draw a crowd wherever it goes, said Doug Zimmer, U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokesman who helped develop the idea.

Zimmer said the trailer is expected to make a showing at the Wenatchee River Salmon Festival in Leavenworth Oct. 1-2, and may also appear at county fairs in North Central Washington.

Agency officials can sign up to use the trailer, which has an awning and all of the educational materials needed stored inside.

Once set up, the display includes full body mounts of both a grizzly bear and a black bear so people can see the differences up close.

“Color and size are not good indicators to tell the difference between the species. In Washington, grizzlies aren’t 10 feet tall and a thousand pounds. They’re typically 350 to 400 pounds,” sometimes the same size as a black bear, Zimmer said.

The shape of the bear’s face, its body and the size of its claws are better ways to tell the two apart.

The display also includes a information about how to respond during a grizzly and a black bear encounter, minimizing the chance of an encounter, and materials needed for a demonstration on how to use bear spray.

“We explain what bear spray is and isn’t, and how to tell the difference with self-defense spray, which will not work on bears,” he said. It includes cans of inert materials so people can get a feel for how to deploy the spray.

“And we have boxes and boxes of different educational materials to hand out,” he added.

Zimmer said on his first trip across the state, the response from the public was overwhelming. “I found that people are really hungry for fact-based information, and that’s what we’re interested in providing,” he said.

He said his statewide tour included a stop at a park in Yakima and at the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest headquarters in Wenatchee.

“We stopped going out to lunch, because every time we’d pull into a restaurant, we’d never get out of the parking lot.”

Zimmer said his agency is keeping the trailer in Wenatchee because it is centrally located, with a secure place to keep the trailer and an indoor location for the mounted bears inside, so they won’t deteriorate from changes in temperature.

The trailer requires an agency sponsor, but can be used at all kinds of events, Zimmer added.