Kentucky Fish and Wildlife explains increase in recent black bear sightings

SCOTTSVILLE, Ky. (WBKO) – Black bear sightings in communities throughout southcentral Kentucky have risen in recent weeks, though Kentucky Fish and Wildlife officials say this is a typical part of male bears’ annual migrations.

The latest documented sighting in recent weeks came from Kerry Stinson’s trail cameras on Halifax Road in Scottsville.

His camera captured a young male black bear toppling a deer feeder in his nearby woods.

“They send me notifications every morning of what’s on there, and I was eating breakfast and I just looked down and saw I had a notification, so I opened it, and this feeder was laying on the ground, so I was like, “Well why’s my feeder over?” So, I went back through the pictures and there was a bear, and it kind of made my day,” Stinson recollected.

He shared that the bear visited his feeder around 6 a.m. before moving on. Two days later, he said another Allen County man spotted the same bear on a road roughly 15 miles away, and another sighting placing the bear in a nearby soybean field.

John Hast, a coordinator for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife’s bear and elk program, shared that these sightings are not unheard of during the summer.

“Usually these are younger bears, they will live with mom for about the first year and a half of life. And when breeding season kicks up, usually about the end of May or first of June is when they start getting the boot,” Hast explained. “So, mom’s kind of kicking them out of the nest and then some of the more dominant black bears are running into them and, you know, they know they’re not going to win that fight. So, they go looking for a mate in some fresh territory.”

While the bears seen in nearby communities are likely only passing through and will journey back to the mountains at the end of breeding season, Hast believes that these sightings could become more common as nearby populations continue to grow.

“So, Tennessee’s bear population is very much middle Tennessee, like due south of your area is expanding a lot. So, these may not necessarily be, say, Kentucky bears from around Somerset or something like that,” Hast said. “They could be kind of those middle Tennessee bears coming north a little bit. I’d say your nearest, say, breeding population where female bears are living is kind of down in the Cumberland County, like Burkesville or Dale Hollow Lake area, most likely.”

Black bears sighted outside of their typical range should be admired from a safe distance. They can also be reported to the Kentucky Dept. of Fish and Wildlife to assist in their continued monitoring of nearby populations.

More information on safely coexisting with black bears can be found on BearWise.org.

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