Bears raid restaurants, living rooms — why they keep showing up near people in the US

As Japan continues to grapple with a surge in bear encounters that began last year, the United States is seeing a similar spike. Bear sighting reports have jumped sharply across the country this year, driven largely by drought and population growth that have pushed the animals closer to human settlements.

According to The Washington Post, bear sighting reports jumped this year in at least 15 states, with increases recorded across the West, Northeast and Southeast. Colorado saw the sharpest rise — up as much as 200 percent compared with last year. State wildlife authorities said bear-related reports reached 10,019 this year through this month, more than triple last year's total and more than double the state's annual average.

In Utah, urban bear sightings hit a record high. Most reports involve simple sightings or brief encounters, and attacks remain rare.

Still, the locations where bears are turning up have raised safety concerns. Bears have crawled through bedroom windows and ransacked homes, pried open car doors, and wandered into restaurants, fire stations and vacation rentals. Jason Hawley, the lead bear biologist at Connecticut's Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said about 60 home-intrusion reports involving bears were filed in Connecticut this year.

Experts point to two main causes behind the surge: drought has sharply reduced the bears' natural food supply, while population growth has pushed people into areas closer to bear habitat, drawing the animals toward human food sources.

Bears are typically most active near human areas in autumn, when they forage heavily to build up fat reserves before hibernation. The United States is home to roughly 450,000 American black bears, most of which normally avoid people and approach only when searching for food. But experts warn that once omnivorous bears begin eating human food, they keep returning to populated areas in search of more.

Chris Servheen, a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Bear Specialist Group, told The Washington Post that high-calorie human food sources — garbage, bird feeders and pet food — are all "attractive" to bears. "If a bear is successful in getting human food, it will continue to do so, and mother bears teach this behavior to their cubs," he said.

Environmental conditions have been the primary driver, sharply cutting into the bears' natural food supply and pushing them toward human sources. Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee all cited drought as the main cause. Arjun Dheer, California's black bear coordinator, said parts of the West saw unusually low snowpack followed by warm, dry weather. "These conditions can reduce natural foods like grasses, berries, fruits, acorns and other nuts and mast," he said. "This causes bears to travel farther in search of food before hibernation and take greater risks near developed areas."

In the East, simultaneous growth in both human and bear populations has compounded the problem. As more homes and businesses are built closer to wild areas, the chances of people encountering bears have increased.

States are responding with a range of measures. North Carolina, New Jersey and New York have extended their bear-hunting seasons in recent years. Florida recently reintroduced bear hunting, and California has decided to raise the number of bears hunters are permitted to take.

Gatlinburg, Tennessee, on the edge of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, spent $3 million in 2023 installing more than 460 bear-resistant trash cans and later posted signs throughout the city warning that feeding bears is illegal. Even so, many tourists visiting the national park remain unfamiliar with how to behave around bears — educating them has become an ongoing challenge for the city. Some visitors reportedly do not perceive bears as dangerous and have tried to feed them.

Janelle Mercer, assistant coordinator of the black bear program at the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, said the bear-resistant trash cans in Gatlinburg are working, but have had an unintended consequence: with garbage harder to access, bears are growing bolder, increasingly rummaging through homes and other properties in search of food.