By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
As the Montana Fish & Wildlife Commission brought black bear hunting to a close in some units, a report from the National Shooting Sports Foundation noted how the black bear population nationwide has rebounded over the past 40 years and their range has expanded.
Writing at the NSSF website, Nephi Cole said the black bear population nationally has grown to be somewhere between 339,000 and 465,000.
“State and continental syntheses show black bear numbers rose steadily from the late 1980s, and today, continental estimates are at their highest in a century, while individual U.S. state estimates vary,” Cole wrote.
Before working at NSSF, Cole was Natural Resource Policy Advisor for former Wyoming Governor Matt Mead, a Conservation Biologist for the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, and a Graduate of State University’s Environmental Soil and Water Science program, the organization said.
One eye-catching passage in Cole’s 1,019-word essay notes, “The black bear population increase has produced measurable effects on both people and property. Wildlife agencies and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports document large increases in human–bear incidents, rising reports of bears breaking into homes, vehicles and beehives, and a small but notable rise in dangerous encounters that have prompted local management actions like targeted removals, new coexistence programs and, in some states, renewed limited hunts to help manage the black bear population.”
This might offer one explanation why, in an article at Ammoland News about handguns being good defenses against bear attacks, writer Dean Weingarten includes a handful of self-defense shootings involving black bears. Weingarten is something of the resident bear attack/defense writers for the online firearms news publication. He has covered the subject for a long time.
According to Cole’s report, there could be an estimated 11,000 black bears in Florida by next year, if left unchecked. Wisconsin’s bear population has rebounded from about 9,000 in 1989 to possibly more than 24,000 today, according to the state Department of Natural Resources.
Meanwhile, in Washington state, the Department of Fish and Wildlife estimates there are some 22,000 bruins roaming the wilds. The Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife estimates between 25,000 and 30,000 black bears roam the Beaver State.
While black bear attacks are rare, they do happen. As Weingarten has reported at Ammoland, one black bear was shot in New York state when it broke into a residence. Another bear was killed in Florida as it tangled with a man’s dogs, and a second one was shot by a man when the black bear walked into his back yard and moved toward him aggressively. A fourth involved a bear attack in Wisconsin.
“Meanwhile,” Cole reported in the NSSF article, “authorities have reported first-time fatal black bear attacks in Florida, Arkansas and California in the past year.”
