Population of black bears. This comes from the website AZ. I rounded off some numbers.
Alabama - 200
Alaska - 100,000
Arizona - 3,000
Arkansas - 3,000
California - 27,500
Colorado - 16,000
Connecticut - 900
Florida - 4,000
Georgia - 5,000
Idaho - 25,000
Kentucky - 1,000
Louisiana - 850
Maine - 35,000
Maryland - 2,000
Massachusetts - 4,500
Michigan - 17,500
Minnesota - 13,500
Mississippi - 120
Missouri - 1,000
MMontana - 15,000
Nevada - 500
New Hampshire - 4,900
New Jersey - 3,000
New Mexico - 5,500
New York - 7,000
North Carolina - 20,000
Oklahoma - 2,500
Ohio - 100
Oregon - 27,500
Pennsylvania - 16,000
Rhode Island - 10
South Carolina - 1,100
Tennessee - 5,575
Utah - 4,000
Vermont - 5250
Virginia - 19,000
Washington - 27,500
West Virginia - 13,000
Wisconsin - 24,000

States with unknown figures are Texas and Wyoming.
States with no permanent Black Bear population are Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.

They took away spring bear in WA so populations wiill explode

I believe Ohio's bear population is much higher than 100 bears. I have seen a bear on my street 4 times, once here on my farm and once 20 some feet from my farm. I have found bear hair and scat in my black raspberries. I saw a bear outside of Fresno, Ohio too. My father had a bear go through his neighborhood, that was seen many dozens of times, 70 miles from here. I have a friends, who lives in Washington County, Ohio, who has gotten trail camera pictures of 6 different bears in a few weeks, counting cubs. I've talked to 4 other people who saw bears in different places in Ohio too. I very much doubt we were lucky enough to see some of the only 100 bears supposedly scattered across a state as large as Ohio. I would guess there are over 1000 bears in Ohio.

A quick search of news reports shows many dozens of bear sightings in counties the official Ohio site says have had no sightings in the years the sightings were reported by the news. It's sloppy work by ODNR at best, if not intentional fabrication to mislead the public.

Most of the other states have unbelievably low numbers of bears listed too.

Keith

Texas didn't make the list. In the late 1800s Ol' Ben Lilly
and his dogs tracked and killed most of the bears in Texas.
If you don't know who he was, google it.
He was (This word is unacceptable on Trapperman) on mountain lions too.

I just read the Ben Lilly story yesterday in our local sporting paper.

I doubted the 7,000 number for NY, that seems low to me. I looked it up and that is the number the NY DEC gives (6,000-8,000) for areas open to hunting. I'm guessing they base those numbers on reported hunter harvests.Bears in areas not open to hunting are not counted or estimated. So the actual number of bears statewide is probably significantly higher.
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The PA population is currently listed at about 18,000 black bears by the Game Commission and the population has been growing steadily for thirty years. We kill about 3,500 a year and hunting seasons and areas have been expanding to try and stabilize the population and reduce conflicts with humans

I agree with this. Your DNR does not. They actually have black bears listed as endangered in Ohio.

As a game biologist who has spent many thousands of hours trying to scientifically estimate population sizes of bears (mostly grizzly and/or brown bears) and other large game species, I'd be the first one to ask for confidence limits around those published numbers. Also, how were the estimates derived? I suspect these were wild estimates based on somebody's guesses (PIOMAs) and are not derived from empirical field data. A lot like estimates of wolf numbers. Pretty much every case I'm aware of, when effort was put out to scientifically estimate population size of large animals, they were significantly higher than PIOMA estimates from guesses.

I thought California would be higher

New Jersey and Massachusetts surprised me.

I would guess the population estimate for AR is also low at 3000. Annual harvest is usually between 500 and six hundred - which would be a harvest of 15 to 20% which would be considered very high - especially in light of the fact new, large areas of the state are opening to bear hunting for the first time in the modern bear hunting era

I would also opine that Alabama's numbers are low.

Considering the new reproducing population in north Alabama and the spread of the southern population moving up and out of the mobile/tensaw delta.

A couple hundred maybe was all that was left in the delta twenty years ago but that population has been protected my entire lifetime and are now spilling out into the more upland counties of Clarke, Washington, Monroe and Marengo. Won't be long before they spread into the black belt. Now north alabama has their own bears spreading out from Georgia and Tennessee, they've made it as far south as Walker and Winston counties and reproducing there.

Those NJ numbers are likely on the low side of the estimate - they are VERY conservative about our population, but it's likely much higher if not double or more.

I believe the population several years ago was 20,000 and then took this dip. It may be going back up again.

These numbers pop up every few years and they are way off.

Pretty sure someone pulled them out of a hat to get clicks. I have seen these same numbers going around for nearly 20 years.

Interesting to me is WI has almost as many bears as MN and MI combined 24k compared to 28 combined for those two. I understand thesee are estimates but game departments ( at least in WI use data to determine the number of permits and harvest to maintain a population goal. MI and MN must have combined over twice the area where bear could be common. Could that be that MN and MI are harvesting more bear to keep lower numbers or could it be that much of the higher bear population area in northern WI still has quite a bit of agriculture (more food) and a lot of homes on the thousands of lake which means more human activity and more food, etc.
Could be a combination but compared to the e early 1990s our bear numbers are up quite a bit. Our harvest is roughly 4500 per year and with a 24k estimate we are harvesting about 15% of our estimate per year. We also see many camera photos of twins, triplets and quads so bears must be well fed here.

Bryce

I believe NC has more than 20K bears. Tyrell County in the east has 9K I've heard. Add Dare, Hyde, Washington, Bertie, Pamlico, and Beaufort and surely that is nearly 20K. Plenty in the mountains as well.

I checked out Canadas bear pops,I thought Quebec would have had the highest but it is BC.

Gary Alt said PA could support double the bear population but could not keep up with the bear complaints because of the population.

Yes, I remember that. Back when he was a hero for his successful efforts to rebuild the population. Before he was vilified for his antler restriction proposals.

Everyone is talking about low numbers and I had no clue Georgia’s was that high, lol. Every time I say we don’t have any where I live someone always tells me how many they see, sorta like the black panthers. I knew the East part of the State has some and I’d assume the mountains in the North.

Very interesting thanks everyone for the info.

Gonna have to seriously disagree with the stats from Mn?

....Gulo, PIOMA's??????

You want to know where the bears are just talk to beekeepers.

I'm pretty sure all those estimates are based on Mark Recapture, Line Transect Surveys, and Hair sample DNR testing.

WannaBe,
Are u a blk panther believer?

Btw...our bear population is about 3000 in the North Ga mountains, about 500 Ocmulgee River area just south of Macon, and about 1500 in SE Ga centered around the Okefenokee Swamp.

I'll take a stab at that....pulling it out my a**???

I wish NC hunters would kill at least half of that 20K. The bears are getting to be a nuisance around here. About as bad as having homeless people around.

If you think about it a bear is just an over grown coon.

That's funny, because earlier today I told a guy who came to buy 12 young homing pigeons, to replace the ones he lost over the weekend, while he was at Gettysburg, that a coon is like a small bear. He had a coon climb up on his loft and pull hard enough on a folded up landing board to break the wooden toggle, that was on the inside, holding it in place. Coons give me lots of repeat business.

Keith

Like KeithC we recently had a few show up on people's decks in suburbs....my guess is we have bears in the Shawnee and further west towards the Iowa line.

J. Morse and Jumper -

You've got it exactly right Jumper! I've been using the word "PIOMA" for many decades. It's evolved into a pretty common part of the language in Alaska. White17 is certainly familiar with the word.

Jack

This was last night, county just to the south of me in the northern part. Maybe ten miles tops.

https://fb.watch/l8gTK0Bl-O/?mibextid=Nif5oz

Swamp, that would be a NO. When scientist can’t produce a melanistic cougar, then I’m extremely skeptical that as many as people “see” do exist in the wild. Now that’s not saying a circus didn’t have a black Jaguar escape or something, but it’s sorta like Bigfoot. After all these years, one would’ve been shot or hit by a car. Every photo is grainy. They never walk in front of an expensive trail cam, it’s always the cheapest cam, or foggy, or Smokey, or raining, or snowing, or something that just leaves that “it could be” look.
I frequent the same areas these “black panthers” supposedly are spotted and I’ve yet to see one or hear one. The best I get are folks sending me recordings that have to be a cougar. They done talk to me for months when I send them a recording of a fox somehow making that identical sound, lol. No sir, I don’t believe in them.

Just saw this on OBX Facebook ( North Carolina). Bear at the beach.


picture hosting

The US Weather Service uses PIOMA's every day.

The other prominant statistical device that I recall is the TAMO....

I learned about TAMO in a class on upper air stream physics. TAMO is particularly useful in complex mathematics.

I live in unit 25 in eastern interior Alaska and supposedly we have the highest black bear density in the entire state. The bag limit is 5 black bears and the season is open year round.

Open Quota here.

Virginia bears have mange. It's pretty disgusting.