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5 min readBlack bears are moving into the neighborhood. How do we coexist?
A mama black bear has settled onto someone's patio furniture, foot up, nursing her cub. "This is not adorable," says the homeowner who captured the scene on a Ring camera. But in the lower Mississippi River states—Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas—this kind of encounter is becoming routine. After being hunted nearly to extinction, black bears are rebounding across the Southeast, and their historic territory now overlaps with subdivisions, golf courses, and backyard grills.
Cassandra Stevenson, a reporter for the Tennessee Lookout, started noticing social media chatter about bears in West Tennessee—places where people didn't expect to see them. "They're really common in the eastern or mountainous portion of the state," she says. "But people were posting pictures of black bears munching on corn in a cornfield, running through a golf course, caught on Ring cameras in people's backyards." What she discovered is that these aren't new arrivals. West Tennessee is their historic habitat. Before overhunting and habitat destruction pushed them out, black bears were abundant throughout the Southeast. In Missouri, by the 1890s, wildlife officials thought the species might have been completely extirpated—hunted out of existence.
How the bears came back
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:24) **Black Bears Are Popping Up in Unexpected Places** - Reporter Cassandra Stevenson introduces the phenomenon of black bears appearing in backyards across the southern U.S., from nursing cubs on patio furniture to raiding grills.
- 2 (04:21) **How Black Bear Populations Rebounded** - Stevenson details the conservation efforts that helped black bears recover, including regulated hunting and reintroduction programs.
- 3 (07:17) **The Challenge of Coexisting with Black Bears** - Dr. Naima Harris, a wildlife biologist at Yale, explains that as bear populations grow nationwide (from 20,000 in Pennsylvania to 70,000 in California), encounters are increasing, raising questions about how to live together.
- 4 (09:08) **Best Practices for Living Near Bears** - Harris outlines practical steps for reducing bear conflicts, starting with securing attractants.
- 5 (10:35) **What Black Bears Actually Eat** - Harris explains the ecological role of black bears as omnivores that eat both plant material and meat.
- 6 (12:04) **Do Black Bears Hunt?** - Harris describes black bears as clumsy, sloppy hunters that sometimes take deer fawns, but they are not primary apex predators.
- 7 (13:53) **The Danger of Habituation** - Harris warns against letting bears become habituated to humans, as this leads to conflict and alters their natural behavior.
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Show Notes
Living with black bears is complicated. They’re huge, hungry, and they really don’t care about your hostas. After a long period of being overhunted, black bears are on the rebound. And as they begin returning to parts of their native ranges, they’re finding humans there, too.
Reporter Cassandra Stephenson joins Flora to talk about how these interactions are playing out in southeastern states. Then, carnivore ecologist Nyeema Harris joins to discuss best practices for coexistence.
Guests:
Cassandra Stephenson covers issues impacting rural West Tennessee as a Report for America corps member at The Tennessee Lookout. She’s based in Nashville.
Dr. Nyeema Harris is an associate professor of wildlife and land conservation at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Transcript will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
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