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Photo by Richard Lykes BABY BEAR: This photo was taken on an early morning at Vista Hermosa in Flint Hill.
“Bears were few and far between in the park even in the 1950s,” said Park Fisheries and Wildlife Biologist Jim Atkinson. Over the next few decades, however, their population steadily increased and they began to recolonize their native habitat well into the foothills and the Piedmont. Bears made this recovery all on their own — there were no deliberate reintroductions of bears into this part of Virginia.
The keys to the
bear’s comeback
How could an animal which averages over 200 pounds in weight (with big males sometimes over 500 pounds) move back and prosper in a landscape shared with people?
First, and most important, is the fact that black bears almost never pose a threat, to humans. Attacks are incredibly rare, and no one has ever been seriously injured by an unprovoked attack in Virginia. Many legends to the contrary, a mother bear’s innate response to protect her cubs from a sudden encounter is to flee, not fight. If possible, she and her brood will just melt into the forest. If she feels more threatened, she may send the cubs up a tree, where she can join them if necessary. (This ability to climb out of harm’s way is one of the key distinctions between black bears and the larger grizzly or brown bears of the west).
In Virginia as a whole, black bears average two to three cubs per Utter every other year. But in this area litters of four cubs are not unusual, a sign of an expanding population' which makes bear management a complex issue, says retired Game Warden Jim Bankston. (And no, Jim has not changed the spelling of his last name since my last column
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