North Dakota
Dokken: Black bear sightings rise in North Dakota as population expands
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in nearly three decades of covering the outdoors, it’s that wildlife sightings or encounters that are beyond the ordinary get people’s attention.
Such was the case Oct. 18, when multiple trail camera photos of as many as five black bears converging on a bait pile set for deer east of Grafton, North Dakota, showed up on social media. As of Thursday morning, Oct. 24, the posting had been shared more than 1,000 times – just from that site.
In this age of trail cameras and social media, it’s hard for critters to hide.
No doubt bear sightings in North Dakota have become more common in recent years, a trend that should come as no surprise, given strong black bear populations just across the Red River in northwest Minnesota.
Growing up in northwest Minnesota, I remember when bear sightings were a relatively uncommon occurrence. Over time, though, bears became more abundant as the population expanded west from more heavily forested areas in northern Minnesota.
Now, bears are common in northwest Minnesota – and a similar story may be playing out in North Dakota.
Stephanie Tucker, Game Management Section leader and furbearer biologist for the North Dakota Game and Fish Department in Bismarck, said she has seen the Grafton trail camera photos and confirmed they’re legitimate.
“As I mentioned to the reporting party, bears are notorious for taking advantage of a free meal, and large bait piles can attract multiple bears because they are pretty tolerant of one another when food is not in short supply,” Tucker told me in an email. “We highly encourage folks to remove any food attractants for at least two weeks if they don’t want bears around.”
Not that many years ago, the thought was that North Dakota didn’t have a known breeding black bear population –
the Game and Fish Department still says as much on its website
– and that any bears seen in the state were simply passing through.
No more, Tucker says.
“Actually, we have confirmed breeding on our side of the (Red) river, not to mention bears are definitely over-wintering in our state,” she said.
Game and Fish tracks bear and other furbearer sightings through an
online reporting feature
it launched a few years ago. So far this year, the department has received more than 20 reports of bear sightings, of which more than 15 were verified.
Only a couple of those reports turned out to be unfounded.
The number of black bear reports Game and Fish received between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024, was up from previous years, as well, Tucker says.
Contributed / North Dakota Game and Fish Department
“Each bear can – and typically does – get reported multiple times, so the graph is not necessarily a reflection of the number of bears present,” Tucker said. “For example, we’ve had at least two black bears (maybe more) that were wandering around western North Dakota this summer and fall, which were reported to us at least eight times.”
So far, at least, the department doesn’t have any plans to launch a formal research project to learn more about bear populations in the state, Tucker says. Nor –
as she told me last year about this time
– are there any plans to establish a hunting season.
“I’m not convinced we need to let some hunters harvest some bears to find out more about them in North Dakota,” Tucker told me in a story I wrote in September 2023. “They are pretty conspicuous and with the prevalence of trail cameras, we have a pretty good idea of what is going on.”
And while no formal study is on the horizon, Tucker says she encourages the public to report bear sightings, either with the
online reporting feature
or by contacting the department through more traditional means.
“We really, really appreciate any (and) all information the public has been – and hopefully continues – to provide us about bears in their area,” Tucker said.
gf.nd.gov/wildlife/id/carnivores/black-bear
bearwise.org
North Dakota
North Dakota officials celebrate being among big winners in federal rural health funding
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Tony Osburn scored 27 points as Omaha beat North Dakota 90-79 on Thursday.
Osburn shot 8 of 12 from the field, including 5 for 8 from 3-point range, and went 6 for 9 from the line for the Mavericks (8-10, 1-2 Summit League). Paul Djobet scored 18 points and added 12 rebounds. Ja’Sean Glover finished with 10 points.
The Fightin’ Hawks (8-11, 2-1) were led by Eli King, who posted 21 points and two steals. Greyson Uelmen added 19 points for North Dakota. Garrett Anderson had 15 points and two steals.
___
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.
MINOT — Minot’s District 3 is home to Reps. Jeff Hoverson and Lori VanWinkle, two of the most controversial members of the Legislature, but maybe not for much longer.
District 3, like all odd-numbered districts in our state, is on the ballot this election cycle, and the House incumbents there
have just drawn two serious challengers.
Tim Mihalick and Blaine DesLauriers, each with a background in banking, have announced campaigns for those House seats. Mihalick is a senior vice president at First Western Bank & Trust and serves on the State Board of Higher Education. DesLauriers is vice chair of the board and senior executive vice president at First International Bank & Trust.
The entry into this race has delighted a lot of traditionally conservative Republicans in North Dakota
Hoverson, who has worked as a Lutheran pastor, has frequently made headlines with his bizarre antics. He was
banned from the Minot International Airport
after he accused a security agent of trying to touch his genitals. He also
objected
to a Hindu religious leader participating in the Legislature’s schedule of multi-denominational invocation leaders and, on his local radio show, seemed to suggest that Muslim cultures that force women to wear burkas
have it right.
Hoeverson has also backed legislation to mandate prayer and the display of the Ten Commandments in schools, and to encourage the end of Supreme Court precedent prohibiting bans on same sex marriage.
Tom Stromme / The Bismarck Tribune
VanWinkle, for her part, went on a rant last year in which she suggested that women struggling with infertility have been cursed by God
(she later claimed her comments, which were documented in a floor speech, were taken out of context)
before taking
a weeklong ski vacation
during the busiest portion of the legislative session (she continued to collect her daily legislative pay while absent). When asked by a constituent why she doesn’t attend regular public forums in Minot during the legislative session,
she said she wasn’t willing to “sacrifice” any more of her personal time.
The incumbents haven’t officially announced their reelection bids, but it’s my practice to treat all incumbents as though they’re running again until we learn otherwise.
In many ways, VanWinkle and Hoverson are emblematic of the ascendant populist, MAGA-aligned faction of the North Dakota Republican Party. They are on the extreme fringe of conservative politics, and openly detest their traditionally conservative leaders. Now they’ve got challengers who are respected members of Minot’s business community, and will no doubt run well-organized and well-funded campaigns.
If the 2026 election is a turning point in the
internecine conflict among North Dakota Republicans
— the battle to see if our state will be governed by traditional conservatives or culture war populists — this primary race in District 3 could well be the hinge on which it turns.
In the 2024 cycle, there was an effort, largely organized by then-Rep. Brandon Prichard, to push far-right challengers against more moderate incumbent Republicans.
It was largely unsuccessful.
Most of the candidates Prichard backed lost, including Prichard himself, who was
defeated in the June primary
by current Rep. Mike Berg, a candidate with a political profile not all that unlike that of Mihalick and DesLauriers.
But these struggles among Republicans are hardly unique to North Dakota, and the populist MAGA faction has done better elsewhere. In South Dakota, for instance, in the 2024 primary,
more than a dozen incumbent Republicans were swept out of office.
Can North Dakota’s normie Republicans avoid that fate? They’ll get another test in 2026, but recruiting strong challengers like Mihalick and DesLauriers is a good sign for them.
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