Michigan’s 556 black bear records are a map of the north: Chippewa, Alger, and Marquette counties lead the tally, and nearly every top locality, from Hiawatha National Forest to the state forest areas around Newberry and Shingleton, sits in the Upper Peninsula.
Two peninsulas, one north woods
The Upper Peninsula’s mixed conifer and hardwood forest is classic bear country, and records run from the Porcupine Mountains and Ottawa National Forest in the west clear to the Sault Ste. Marie area in the east. The Lower Peninsula record is thinner and leans on the northern forests around Manistee National Forest and Roscommon, the southern edge of a range that gives out toward the state’s farm country. Bears feed through both peninsulas on spring sedges and insects, summer berries, and fall nuts, and they keep to cover while doing it.
A double-peaked calendar
Reports rise sharply to a May and June crest as bears emerge and breed, ease slightly in midsummer, and lift again in August and September when bears feed hard ahead of denning. December and January counts fall to nearly nothing. Even in the Upper Peninsula, where bears are part of the landscape, most encounters are brief and at a distance; a bear aware of people almost always yields the ground, and the rare problem bear is one that has found food near them.
Status in Michigan
NatureServe ranks the American black bear S5, Secure, in Michigan, and the species is native to its Michigan range. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state.
Full species profile
