Black Bear Encounters are Surging in 18 States

Offer Ben-Arie never imagined seeing a 400-pound black bear in his backyard, but the stunned New Jersey man channeled lessons from reality television to escape unscathed.

"And I'm, like, 10 feet from this bear," Ben-Arie, of West Orange, told Newsweek. "I have watched enough of that show 'Alone' to know that you're supposed to make the bear aware of you."

Ben-Arie, 45, proceeded to make his presence known with a simple "hey bear," he recalled of the July 22 encounter with the massive mammal estimated to be roughly 5 feet tall.

"And it just lays down and looks at me, and I didn't know whether or not the next thing that was going to happen was the bear was going to come kill me or not," he said. "So I stood there because I know you're not supposed to run away and I took a couple of photos and kept shouting at the bear."

The opportunistic omnivore ran off into woods near Ben-Arie's suburban home, but the distressed father now plans on buying bear spray and installing a fence to protect his wife, 9-year-old son and the family's Bernedoodle.

"It's pretty worrisome," he said. "We freely went into our backyard all the time."

From New Jersey to Texas to California, black bears are thriving throughout the United States, where human interactions with Ursus americanus are increasing in 18 states – with more than 46,000 incidents reported to state agencies in 2022, according to data compiled by the International Association for Bear Research and Management.

The 18 states identified in the report included Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia.

"The conservation success of the American black bear has put more black bears on the landscape," said Carl Lackey, co-chair of the nonprofit's management committee. "So, more people and more bears kind of equals more human-bear conflicts."

In 2015, a similar survey by the group using five-year averages tallied nearly 21,000 bear complaints nationwide – less than half of 2022's total.

The vast majority of Americans who live among the estimated 471,000 black bears in 41 states will never have harrowing experiences like Ben-Arie, but few people take the necessary precautions "until the bear is knocking on their door," Lackey said.

"People know that they have bears in their neighborhood, but they don't take the steps to prevent conflicts until it actually touches them personally," he said.

The widespread uptick of encounters – largely driven by bears in search of food – also shows no signs of abating as the species thrives across the country, Lackey said.

"As the bear population expands, they're looking for places to go," Lackey said. "And bears are very adaptable, very opportunistic. They adapt very well to making a living in and amongst human development."

To avoid conflicts with black bears, which can exceed 600 pounds and 7 feet tall when upright, eliminating attractants like food, garbage and bird feeders are vital first steps since they're emboldened once spotting a potential source.

"Their behavior will escalate," Lackey said. "They come around at night, they get into a garbage can, nothing bad happens to them. And then they'll escalate in that conflict behavior to the point where they start breaking into homes and becoming a real danger to public safety."

Patrice Miller, 71, was found dead on November 8 in Downieville, California, where authorities responding to a welfare check initially believed a black bear had entered her home north of Lake Tahoe after she died. But a coroner's report later confirmed Miller had been mauled, marking California's first documented fatal attack by a black bear.

DNA analysis subsequently confirmed the bear, which was trapped and euthanized, was the same animal that mauled Miller, California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials said.

In Utah, wildlife officials euthanized a bear Wednesday that attacked a runner in Big Cottonwood Canyon, where the man was bitten on his arm. The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources later tracked the animal using dogs.

The adult female black bear "bluff charged" the man twice, but he fought back and fended off the bear after it bit his arm. The victim drove himself to a hospital, officials said.

Tom Smith, a plant and wildlife sciences professor at Brigham Young University who has studied bears for decades, believes the impact of climate change across the United States will likely factor into the growing frequency of human-black bear interactions.

"They'll probably increase in numbers because with more favorable conditions, you know, less harsh winters it seems in some areas means longer feeding periods," Smith said of encounters with black bears. "Numbers are up in many places and one of the things that we see across all the bear populations is that the more people and more bears you have, the more problems you have."

But the behavioral patterns of black bears aren't widely changing and encounters in the wild – as a runner did earlier this month in Yosemite National Park – are still extremely rare, Smith said.

"In spite of their great power and ability bears have to inflict a lot of damage on people, one thing we see from extended studies is they go to great lengths to avoid people and conflict," Smith said. "And that makes sense – they don't get to be old bears by doing stupid things. So if they can, they avoid risk, but sometimes people make them a deal they can't refuse and you get problems."

With plentiful food sources available throughout the entire year, some black bears in and around Lake Tahoe no longer hibernate during winter months, Smith said.

Across the country, in Vermont, where up to 7,000 black bears roam, wildlife officials saw a drastic spike in human-black bear interactions in 2020 when 1,710 reports were tallied, an increase from 626 a year earlier. Through Tuesday, 1,151 incidents had been reported thus far in 2024, compared to 912 in 2023, data shows.

Improperly stored garbage factored into 46% of human-bear incidents reported in Vermont between 2011 and 2023 – signaling the role people can play in avoiding unwanted encounters, said Jaclyn Comeau, a wildlife biologist and black bear project leader at Vermont's Department of Fish & Wildlife.

"We've basically been teaching them very slowly over the past 30 years as their population recolonized their former range that backyards and town centers are a really good place to find high quality food," Comeau told Newsweek. "Garbage, bird feeders, backyard chickens and that sort of thing."

In Florida, where more than 4,000 black bears were tallied in 2017, a 53 percent jump from a decade earlier, tech-savvy residents can track nuisance animals using an interactive bear map created by the state's Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Black bears in the Sunshine State tend to become active in the spring, with juvenile bears starting to leave their mothers throughout summer as they seek new locations to settle. That can lead to some animals being spotted in unexpected areas, FWC spokeswoman Lisa Thompson said.

"The highest level of bear activity occurs in the fall," Thompson told Newsweek. "During that time of year, bears need to start consuming up to 20,000 calories a day to pack on fat reserves for the winter."

State wildlife officials in Massachusetts, where at least 4,500 black bears live, said residents call daily about black bear activity, particularly as the animals expand their range eastward.

"These calls have become more common as the bear population has grown and people have provided easy access to human-associated food, like bird feeders and unprotected backyard chickens," said Meghan Crawford, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries & Wildlife. "Black bears are generally not aggressive and tend to avoid people. However, they can lose their fear of people when they find food around our homes. That is why it's essential for communities to work together to prevent bear conflict.

Lackey, meanwhile, had a blunter warning for Americans living where black bears roam.

"Bears are there whether you see 'em or not, if you're in bear habitat," Lackey told Newsweek. "Don't wait for a conflict. Take the necessary cautions and be aware before that happens."