BLACK BEARS IN MISSOURI

​

Black bears (Ursus americanus), once abundant across the North American landscape, were extirpated from ~41% of their historic range, with much of that extirpation occurring across the contiguous United States. Conservation and translocation efforts in the last half century have allowed remnant populations to grow and expand; black bears are recolonizing the places they used to roam. 

​

In Missouri, black bears were believed to be mostly extirpated by the mid-1950s. In 1958, Arkansas began reintroducing bears and sightings in Missouri subsequently increased in the 1960s (mainly in the Ozarks region of the state). The population has increased from approximately 280 adult/subadults in 2012 to 540-840 individuals in 2019; levels which have allowed for the opening of a hunting season. Given this conservation success story, careful population management is a key priority for Missouri. Our research team at Mississippi State, in partnership with the Missouri Department of Conservation and Dr. Jerrold Belant and Dr. Mariela Gantchoff at the State University of New York, helped build an understanding of fine-scale habitat use, areas of potential human-bear conflict (Boudreau et al. 2022), and hunter vulnerability (Boudreau et al. 2023).