Reports cluster along Alaska’s southern coast, from Tongass National Forest’s temperate rainforest through Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve to Kenai Fjords National Park farther west. That’s a region of connected conifer forest and salmon-bearing streams, exactly the kind of cover a black bear needs to den, forage, and move between drainages.
Bears here den through winter and spend the growing season working a plant-heavy diet of berries and forest mast, switching hard to salmon once the runs start filling coastal streams. Color tells you little in this state either. Alaska’s black bears run black, brown, and cinnamon, the same range seen across western populations elsewhere in the country.
Records climb from spring into a June through August peak, then fall off through autumn as bears drift toward their dens. That curve tracks the salmon run and berry season, not a summer surge in how many bears are actually present.
Full species profile
