Study finds black bears migrating to 2 states

The black bear population in northern Arkansas appears to be expanding into southern Missouri and eastern Oklahoma, according to a University of Missouri study published this week in the scientific journal Molecular Ecology.

A team of researchers, including Missouri professor of biological sciences Lori Eggert, set out in 2010 to study whether any black bear populations had survived both overhunting and deforestation of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Eggert said the researchers discovered black bear populations throughout the Missouri Ozarks totaling between 250 and 300. Using "hair snares," which collect pieces of bear fur with thin strips of barbed wire set up near scent bait, researchers gained a clearer picture over the course of several years of the size and genetic diversity of black bears in the region.

The bears also were hunted to near-extinction in Arkansas during the early 20th century as well, but the area was repopulated when more than 250 black bears were relocated from Minnesota and Canada's Manitoba in the 1950s and 1960s, Eggert said. Tracing the lineage of black bears in the Ozarks and Ouachitas before that point is nearly impossible, she said.

"There's not very good records about who came from where, and what came from which place," Eggert said.

Clay Newcomb, director of the Arkansas Black Bear Association, said the expansion of bears into neighboring states from the Arkansas Ozarks is a sign of thriving wildlife.

"Bears showing up in southern Missouri is not a surprise to anybody that knows bears and knows Arkansas," Newcomb said. "Some of our best, most dense bear populations are in Newton and Madison county."

Newcomb said the gradual migration of bears is a product of the animals' natural tendency to expand out as competition for scarce resources increases.

"A population of bears will self-regulate," Newcomb said. "As population densities increase, younger males will start to satellite out further and further."

Myron Means, the statewide bear program coordinator for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, said there are three major populations of black bears in Arkansas: The Ozark population to the north estimated at about 2,500; the Ouachita population to the south, estimated at about 2,000; and the White River Drainage population to the east, clustered primarily in Arkansas and Lincoln counties, estimated at about 500. The numbers for the Ozark and Ouachita populations are based on a six-year study completed in 2013, Means said.

Means said that in addition to gradually growing bear populations, the steadily increasing healthy forests in southern Missouri are probably another contributing factor.

"The Mark Twain forests are growing back up. A couple of areas were like our forests, they've been cut over, and just grown back up," Means said. "You need mature forests for good bear habitat. It's the same issue with eastern Oklahoma."

According to the Missouri study's findings, maintaining natural corridors for wildlife that prevent the "fragmentation" of natural lands is crucial to sustaining genetic diversity in the black bear populations in the region.

"I think it's a situation of 'not doing something' deliberately," Eggert said. "It means we plan effectively, we consider wildlife when we do planning for communities. If we want to have wildlife, and if we don't want to have human-wildlife interactions that are adverse, then we need to think about that. "

Metro on 08/14/2014

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