West Texas Black Bears Slowly Returning

Researchers are trapping black bears and affixing GPS tracking collars to study the bruins in West Texas, where numbers are small but growing.

Article by Alan Clemons

Black bears in the far West Texas region are being studied by Borderlands Research Institute at Sul Ross State University and the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department, both of which are encouraged for the continued return of the species. Black bears are rare in the Lone Star State, after significant declines during the 1940s and ’50s,

“It all started quite a number of years ago. Back in the 1990s, people were noticing black bears were starting to come into Big Bend once again. From there, the bears have been slowly being noticed outside the park farther and farther from the Mexican border,” Amanda Veals Dutt, a post-doctoral research specialist at BRI, said. “The impetus of our project is to understand where they’re coming from, where they’re going, what they’re doing and how we can protect the habitat and resources for them as they recolonize Texas, so we can make sure we have a healthy bear population well into the future.”