Bearing Witness

Black bear numbers in West Virginia are just right, thanks to steady monitoring and careful game management.

This story was originally published in the December 2024 issue of Wonderful West Virginia. To subscribe, visit wonderfulwv.com.

Written by Stan Bumgardner

The American black bear, Ursus Americanus, is the king of the West Virginia hills. Our state animal has inspired the names of streams, lakes, parks, school mascots, and even Morgantown’s minor league baseball team. At Dolly Sods, black bears forage for serviceberries on Bear Rocks. “Devil Anse” Hatfield didn’t just feud with McCoys; he was known far and wide as a skilled bear wrestler. But bears aren’t just for tangling with—their meat is becoming increasingly popular as a tasty, healthier alternative to commercial beef.

The frighteningly ferocious bear is also our favorite childhood stuffed friend and the pitiful but loveable protagonist in our favorite story. Our love–fear existence with bears isn’t new by any means. “Bears have been here as long as we have, and we’ve had interactions with them, both good and bad,” says Colin Carpenter, who has worked for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources for 23 years, 15 of which he spent leading the Black Bear Project. A wildlife biologist, he first visited West Virginia from Pennsylvania to—what else?—hunt bears. Decades later, his research and recommendations inform WVDNR about bear hunting seasons and regulations.

Bearing the Facts

Bears have been friend and foe. We’ve relied on them for our own survival: Prehistoric cultures used every part of the bear. Early settlers similarly relied on bears for sustenance and hides. In the 1800s, bear fat was used to grease wagon wheels and light lamps.

Despite the benefits bears bring us, we have harmed them much more than they ever have us. “They’re much more adaptable than we are,” Carpenter observes. “Bears do far better living around us than we do around them.”

Today, West Virginia has between 12,000 and 14,000 black bears. Carpenter says that’s a healthy number. Like another childhood bear story, some parts of the state could use a few less or more, while others are just right. He estimates our overall number these days is comparable to when prehistoric cultures and pioneers arrived.

In the interim, though, that hasn’t always been the case. Historically, people felt threatened by bears for the same reasons we do today. By the 1900s, indiscriminate bear hunting had almost eliminated them from our state. And in the decades that followed, bears struggled to come back after losing their precious forestland to massive logging operations.

Forests are essential to bears. Trees produce nuts, which bears love. To be clear, they’ll eat anything and enjoy a diverse diet, but they rely primarily on plants and seeds, such as nuts. They also consume a lot of insects. “Ants and wasps make up much of their diet,” Carpenter says. Bears, in short, rely on nature to supply their food, and when nature is altered, their lives are disrupted.

Another big change came in the early 1900s, as logging operations grew: A blight gradually wiped out the American chestnut. This choice building material was also a nut factory that, unlike other trees, such as oaks, cranked out a dependable annual batch. The main reason, according to Carpenter, was that the old chestnuts “flowered later in the year, after the threat of frost was gone.” Carpenter thinks that, with that type of ample chestnut production, we may have had even more black bears before the blight than we do now.

Federal and state agencies teamed up to regrow as much forest as they could, helped inadvertently by the downturn in the state’s economic fortunes—as West Virginia’s human population fell precipitously in the 1950s and 1960s, forests began taking over abandoned farms. Still, despite our great tree recovery story, bears weren’t reappearing in large numbers, puzzling biologists as to whether they might be disappearing permanently.

Looking back to the 1980s, Carpenter says, only about 10 or 12 of our 55 counties had any black bears on a regular basis. Since then, though, we’ve witnessed an amazing turnaround, and bears now reside across the state. In addition to the reforestation, he notes another key turning point. In 1979, new regulations shifted the hunting season from November to December, because female bears give birth in late November—giving them more time to produce more cubs. “Add 30 or 40 years on top of that,” he says, “and the bear population really took off.”

The Black Bear Project

How exactly does the WVDNR come up with its numbers? It takes time—years, to be exact.

The Division has been researching our bear population since the mid–20th century, using federal funds generated by an 11% excise tax on sporting arms, ammunition, and archery equipment started by the 1937 Pittman–Robertson Act. Carpenter calls it the most significant financial resource for wildlife conservation in North America.

In the 1950s, West Virginia wildlife experts sensed that bear numbers were low, but they needed data. In the latter part of that decade, the WVDNR’s predecessor agency tracked bear numbers but, for some reason, stopped after about three years. This data became only a snapshot in history rather than a baseline for tracking trends. Carpenter credits longtime WVDNR Lead Bear Biologist Joe Rieffenberger for restarting the program in the early 1970s. He initiated a systemwide process to tag and track bears to see how hunting seasons and regulations affected the population. Division biologists have kept steady black bear records ever since.

For about the past 45 years, the WVDNR has relied on population reconstruction to calculate the numbers. Using the ages of bears from each harvest, Carpenter is able to back-fill the population through time. When hunters kill a bear and submit a tooth to the WVDNR—which is required—that data feeds into determining how big our population is. So each year’s harvest actually provides years’ worth of data.

“It gives us a conservative estimate of population size, because it doesn’t include natural mortality, which is usually pretty low,” Carpenter says. In areas where bears are hunted less, the WVDNR is more uncertain of the numbers than where there’s active hunting, like in the eastern mountain chain and southern coalfields. As such, he has extremely accurate information for about half the state.

This isn’t just an academic exercise. Biologists can provide data-driven scientific information to the Division’s Natural Resources Commission so it can adjust hunting seasons. For instance, high numbers in 2021 led to more restrictions and lower harvests in 2022, which led to eased restrictions in many places and higher numbers again in 2023.

The numbers, when analyzed by region, explain why some regulations apply to certain counties and not to others. Another tool to control the bear population is restricting dogs in some seasons and places. From his own experience, Carpenter laughs, “Well, bear hunting is never easy, but hounds make it a lot easier.” The WVDNR introduced an early non-dog hunting season in 13 counties for the 2024 season.

Carpenter points to a time about 20 years ago when bears were “getting out of hand” in the mountain counties. In 2007, the Division introduced more hunting opportunities just in that region. “I could literally see the bear population numbers start to come down,” Carpenter says, “but not until about 2015.” That goes back to trends. He says that one year’s harvest provides limited information until compared with the previous years. “We’re always looking back in time,” he adds. When age data from the 2023 harvest was announced this past fall, Carpenter was able to reconstruct numbers for 2020. It’s a constant mathematical and biological juggling act as he closely monitors the trends.

Are Bears Getting Closer to Humans?

The quick answer is yes, with the caveat that we’re also moving closer to them, particularly in those former farming areas that have been transformed into suburbs. Various factors are at play. Most bear–human contact typically occurs in May—depending on the year’s spring berry crop—and especially in years when natural food conditions are low. Like us, if they’re hungry and can’t find food, they’ll go where the food is.

Interestingly, despite the severe 2024 drought, bear numbers are about where Carpenter wants them. Bears were fortunate this year because the drought didn’t really peak until after the berry crop had come in.

In years with little natural food, Carpenter says, “That’s when they come out of the woodwork. Everything we feed our pets or put in a bird feeder, bears can eat.” In low-food years—1997 being one of the worst in memory—they’ll eat anything from livestock to trash. Due to a late frost that year, small berries failed in spring and summer, and the hard mast, or nut production, didn’t occur that fall. Similar instances happened in 2007 and 2009.

One of the worst years all around was 2020, when the berry crops failed and something else happened: the COVID-19 pandemic started. More time at home meant more outdoor trash, a dinner invitation for hungry bears. Carpenter notes, though, based on surveys, West Virginians have grown more comfortable with bears living around us—as long as they stay out of our trash, which truly is on us more than the bears.

“That’s the balance of our whole project,” he concludes. “Having a bear population that provides recreational opportunities for our sportsmen and -women while keeping that population low enough so, in poor-food years, they don’t think their world is going to end.”