Arkansas holds 1,615 black bear records, one of the heaviest tallies for the species in this atlas, and the map splits cleanly between two landscapes: the Ozark highlands around Ozark National Forest and the Buffalo National River, and the lowland forests of the south in Ashley, Dallas, and Union counties.
A comeback written into the highlands
Arkansas’s bears had dwindled to a fraction of their former range by the mid-twentieth century, and the animals spread through the Ozarks today descend largely from bears restocked there in the following decades, one of the earliest large-scale bear restoration efforts in North America. Records now run from Sylamore Wildlife Management Area and the Buffalo National River country south through the Ouachita National Forest, a sweep of oak-hickory and pine that produces the acorns, berries, and insect prey a bear’s year is built around.
Feeding hard toward winter
Reports climb steeply into midsummer and stay high from August through October, the months when bears eat nearly around the clock to build fat ahead of denning, a stretch of the year when they range farther and cross more ground in daylight. Winter counts fall off as bears den, though Arkansas’s relatively mild winters rouse them more often than in northern states, and a warm spell in January can put a bear briefly back on the landscape.
Status in Arkansas
NatureServe ranks the American black bear S4, Apparently Secure, in Arkansas, and the species is native to its Arkansas range. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state.
Full species profile
