Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency
Ed Carter, Executive Director

Black bears (Ursus americanus) are an important wildlife resource of the forests of Tennessee. In recent years Tennessee's bear management program has become an emerging success story. Strong enforcement of game laws and effective management techniques have resulted in increasing populations and harvests. However, the status of Tennessee’s bear population hasn't always been so healthy.

Tennessee's bear population is shared with the states of Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Presently, bears exist in adequate numbers in eleven Tennessee counties (Blount, Carter, Cocke, Greene, Johnson, Monroe, Polk, Sevier, Sullivan, Unicoi, and Washington) along the eastern border of the state.

The current status of Tennessee's black bear population is good. Bait station surveys, conducted annually since 1981, indicate that the population increased significantly during the 1980's. The legal harvest of bears further indicates a relatively abundant bear population. Since 1981, the legal harvest has increased from a low of 21 bears in 1982, to 370 in 1997. Some of the increase in the legal harvest can be attributed to the establishment of a 5-day October season in counties surrounding GSMNP, which was first initiated in 1987.

Historically, black bears existed throughout the state of Tennessee. Dramatic land use changes resulted in the decline of black bear populations by the 1880's, with bears present only in the forested areas of the eastern part of the state. Further population declines occurred due to large scale logging and subsequent habitat destruction in the period from 1900 to 1930. Excessive hunting and trapping contributed to the decline, and by 1930 bears were present only in a few isolated areas of Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia.

Prior to the 1970's, there is a general paucity of reliable information on the status of bear populations in Tennessee. The year 1973 more or less marks the beginning of Tennessee’s modern era in black bear management. This is significant because the Agency got serious about its bear management program, with increased emphasis on research and monitoring, habitat protection, and enforcement of wildlife regulations.

Tennessee's bear management program has focused on three primary issues:

• enforcement of game laws to reduce the illegal kill
• protection of the female segment of the population
• efforts to minimize habitat degradation

Law enforcement has been a key component of the bear management program for a number of years. Though black bear populations are in generally good shape in North America, the species was added to Appendix III of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1991, largely because of its "look alike nature" to Asian black bears, and the difficulty in distinguishing its parts from those of other bear species.