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Preface
- Introduction - CHAPTERS:
1 - 2 - 3
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4 - 5 -
6 - 7 - 8 - 9
- 10 - 11 - 12
Photo Galleries - ORDER
A PRINTED COPY!
*Black bear
The black bear is the most numerous and widely distributed bear in North America and has been a resident of the continent for about 500,000 years. Though similar in appearance to the grizzly, this bear is generally smaller and darker, with shorter, more curved claws, a straighter nose, larger ears, a small white patch on the chest, and no shoulder hump. As with grizzlies and humans, appearance and behavior between individuals vary greatly.
Adult black bears generally weigh from 150 to 450 pounds, measure 2'-3' at the shoulder and about 5' long. Females usually are smaller than males. Their fur is black or dark brown, occasionally cinnamon, or even blonde. Like grizzlies, black bears have poor eyesight, good hearing, a keen sense of smell, great intelligence, and are easily irritated. They are fine runners, swimmers, and, unlike the straighter-clawed grizzlies, adept tree climbers. Black bears are more territorial than grizzlies, but loosely so, also wandering great distances in search of food, singly or mother and cubs together.
Like the grizzly, the black bear has flat molars and sharp front teeth; its herbivorous/omnivorous diet includes berries, acorns, grasses, leaves, cactus fruits, bulbs, bark, roots, honey, bird eggs, grasshoppers, ants, termites, grubs, fish, small mammals, an occasional larger animal, and carrion. In some areas frequented by tourists, black bears eat tourist treats and garbage. Though even less dangerous to people than grizzlies, they are much more numerous and likely to make contact with humans.
Like most Western predators, black bears are opportunistic scavengers. Most bears readily eat from cattle and sheep carcasses. Though probably most eat livestock as carrion only, they are from circumstantial evidence, or simply on principle, declared stock killers and relentlessly hunted and killed. Others, by eating livestock carrion, acquire a taste and begin killing livestock for food, whereafter they are pursued unto death. Those few black bears that kill livestock regularly do so because they are driven to by an overgrazed habitat or presented an almost irresistible offering of unprotected mutton or beef for their dining pleasure. Most never set teeth on livestock, but they too are often pursued and killed, simply because they are bears. And, many are killed by traps and poisons as non-target species.
Early Western settlers often could not tell if they were killing black or grizzly bears, but to them it did not matter. With help from government predator "control" in the early 1900s, black bears were killed so indiscriminately that in 1919 even a chief federal predator "control" agent, J. Stokley Ligon, reported, "Few of the black and brown bears are really destructive to livestock, most ranchmen are so unfair as to condemn all the animals for the crimes of a few." By the late 1920s both black and grizzly bears had been so reduced in numbers and range that Ligon reported, "Poverty stricken ranges, as a result of excessive range utilization, and drought often render their usual food so scanty that out of need bears become killers; hence, as respects losses from bears, forage conservation would result in increased savings of cattle and sheep." (Brown 1985)
Until the 1920s black bear decline in the West generally paralleled that of the grizzly, but after, the grizzly gradually slid toward oblivion, while the black bear partially recovered. One reason is that predator "controllers" began focusing more attention on the grizzly. More importantly, loss of the grizzly's open habitat to ranching and settlement made it impossible for the animal's low reproductive rate to recoup relentless attrition from stockmen and their bearhunting allies. The black bear, on the other hand, needing a smaller home range and naturally more a creature of the forest, was more resilient.
Since the early 1920s black bears have expanded their populations and territories, though not nearly to their original numbers or range. Although they live in mountainous and forested areas in every Western state, black bears have been extirpated completely from numerous mountain ranges, and where they do survive they do so in much smaller numbers. Increasing evidence indicates that in recent years their numbers are once again declining. In the West, their most deadly enemy is still ranching. In 1988 ADC alone reported killing 289 black bears, while perhaps thousands were killed through other government predator programs and, mostly, by stockmen themselves. Each year, thousands more are precluded from existence due to a degraded range and ranching developments.
Like the grizzly, the black bear has necessarily changed its habits and habitat since Europeans and their livestock arrived in the West. As opposed to pristine times when it roamed freely between vegetation zones in diverse terrain, the black bear now stays almost exclusively in or near the protective cover of thickly forested areas; it is secretive, primarily nocturnal, and seldom seen, except as a camp robber or garbage eater.