Species-Specific Management (SSM)

Black Bear

The black bear is approximately 5 feet long and varies in weight from 125 to 400 pounds. In the Appalachians, the color is usually dark black. Strong claws are used for tearing, digging, and climbing. Black bears are opportunistic feeders, making use of just about any available food source. While they prefer berries, nuts, grass, and other plants, they also eat carrion, small animals, and fish. When fall approaches, black bears must eat large amounts of food in order to gain enough fat reserves to sustain them through their winter hibernation. During periods of relatively warm winter weather, they may awaken and take short excursions outside.

Black bears reach breeding maturity at about 4 or 5 years of age, and breed every 2 to 3 years. Black bears breed in the spring, usually in May and June, but the embryos do not begin to develop until the mother dens in the fall to hibernate through the winter months. However, if food was scarce and the female has not gained enough fat to sustain herself during hibernation as well as produce cubs, the embryos do not implant (develop).

Black bear cubs are generally born in January or February. The twin cubs are blind pound at birth. By spring, when the bears start leaving their dens, the cubs are inquisitive and playful. They are weaned between July and September of their first year, and stay with the mother through the first full winter. They are usually independent of the female by the second winter. Cub survival is totally dependent on the skill of the mother in teaching her cubs what to eat, where and how to find suitable food, where to den, and when and where to seek shelter from heat or danger.

Except for breeding and raising young, black bears are solitary animals. They are non-aggressive except when injured, protecting their young, or protecting themselves. Daily movements are influenced greatly by temperature and food availability. Bears usually feed in the cool of the evening or early morning. During the heat of the day, they will seek shade in dense underbrush. Home ranges are determined by food types, abundance, and availability, and can be as small as 1 square mile or as great as 100 square miles. In 2001, Joe Clark, director of the U.S. Geological Survey's Southern Appalachian Field Laboratory said that 30 bears in the Smokies have been fitted with transmitter collars for studies on their behavior.

The bear weight predition equation of Cattet is:

Y = e ^-8.16 x₁^1.39 x₂^1.21 x₃^0.08

Where Y is predicted weight in kilograms, x₁ is auxialiary girth in centimeters; x₂ straight body length in centimeters, and x₃ age of bear in years and e = 2.7183

A Michigan State University study found the average home range of a female black bear around 13.96 square kilometers (about 5½ square miles).

Rugged terrain and dense shrubs provide escape cover and den sites for black bears. Black bears also seek den sites under fallen trees, in hollow trees or caves, or in previously occupied dens. They are excellent tree climbers, and will use trees to escape from danger.

Management

1. A major threat to the black bear is widespread poaching to supply Asian markets with bear gall bladders and paws, considered to have medicinal value in China, Japan, and Korea. The demand for these parts also affects grizzly and polar bears. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (also known as CITES), provides measures to curb illegal trade in wildlife and wildlife products across international boundaries, helping to protect the black bear from poaching. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the agency responsible for the U.S. government's compliance with the CITES. Education, and development of substitutes, and general economic development may be the long term solutions to this problem.
2. Stocking or transplanting bears from areas where they have become a nuisance or are abundant can reintroduce the animal to areas where it once lived.
3. Since the bear is an omnivore, it is difficult to state precisely the activities needed to produce needed foods. The answer is to develop plant communities, changing with timber harvest rotations, that produce abundant diverse foods year around, but especially in late autumn before denning occurs. Abundance and fruiting species richness ... provided every year through planned timber harvests and land manipulation (e.g., prescribed burns) ... these are the difficult-to-obtain conditions for the bear. Fall foods, the hard-mast crop that was once stable in the chestnut forests, is now variable within the oak forests. The chestnut was eliminated by a fungus. Managing for mixtures of mast producers offers a difficult alternative. Abundant soft mast (e.g., apples) may augment the late fall food supplies.
4. Small openings made within forests can be developed to produce abundant fruit supplies, small mammals, birds, and amphibians for the foraging bears.
5. Standing water (streams and waterholes) seems good for the bears in all seasons and may be needed as drinking water during the winter period. Such waters, if managed, may provide fish and amphibians.
6. Protecting large den trees and denning sites (caves and large brushpiles) is a useful practice if the locations are protected from human disturbance and feral dogs.
7. Regulating hunting to prevent taking of cubs, fair and equitable distribution of the take, proper licensing, proper use of areas, and appropriate use of technology ("fair chase" principles) is vital. Anticipating low populations (e.g., convergence of low food and low reproduction and severely cold winters) needs to be expressed so that hunters and others observers do not expect high populations and operate on false assumptions about population declines. Matching actual with expected populations can reduce frustrations and inefficient expenditures of money and energy.
8. Rapidly responding to livestock-killing (e.g., sheep), apiary destroying, crop consuming (e.g., corn), and recreationists-disturbing bears seems essential for state and federal agencies and private damage control specialists who engage in integrated damage management.
9. Research in the past few decades has opened some doors but many questions remain for the secure management of the bear.

Photo from Lynn L.Rogers (US Forest Service 1988)

Insert bio info.

Managing Their Effects

Recent conflicts have been noted between recreational horseback riders and bears.

Bears can injure or kill people but they rarely do. Even bears with cubs tend to flee from humans. Only 2 human/bear encounters were recorded over a 19 year period in northern Minnesota. There are only 23 human deaths reported over the past century. If ever attacked, humans can improve their chances by fighting rather than playing dead. Bears are very interesting to watch but they should be given full respect and avoided. They may nip or cuff and certainly should not be teased with food. They rarely enter tents. They usually can be scared away by yelling, waving, and banging pans. A bear feeding on camp groceries may be rushed but never closer than 15 feet. Capsaicin spray repellent (used by postmen as a dog repellent) has been effective sprayed in the eyes of bears (without apparent harm) Bears learn that coolers, etc. have food. Pack food carefully; hang it in trees 12 feet off the ground and 10 feet away from trees. (Large bears can jump 9 feet.) Keep campsites clean. (Info from the North Central Forest Experiment Station, St. Paul, Mn.

References

See: Eger and Engstrom, Fall/Winter 1996, The Bear Facts,Rotunda, a Royal Ontario Museum publication which gives a quick summary of the family Ursidae (Subfamily and Genus) for the world.

Ah, G.L., G.T. Matula, Jr., F.W. Alt, and J.E. Lindzey. 1980. Dynamics of home range and movements of adult black bears in North Eastern Pennsylvania. Bear Biol. Assoc. Con. Ser. 3: 131-136

Cattet, M . 19??. Predicting nutritional condition in blackbears on the basis of morphological and physiological measurements. Canadian J. Zoology 68:32-39 (QL1 N1532

Clark, J.D., J.E. Dunn, K.G. Smith. 1993. A multivariable model of female black bear habitat use for a GIS. J. Wildl. Manage. 57(3): 519-526

Eger and Engstrom (Fall/Winter 1996, The Bear Facts, Rotunda, a Royal Ontario Museum publication) gives a quick summary of the family Ursidae (Subfamily and Genus) for the world.

Landers, J.L., R.J. Hamilton, A.S. Johnston, and R.L. Marchington. 1979. Food and habitats of black bears in South Eastern North Carolina. J. Wildlife Manage. 43(1): 143-153

A contribution from a project funded in part by US Forest Service, Dr. Mike Rauscher, the Southern Appalachian Forest Hypertext Enclclopedia project, 2002

This Web site is maintained by R. H. Giles, Jr.
Last revision July 10, 2002.