New Jersey’s 738 black bear records belong overwhelmingly to one corner of the state. Sussex, Morris, Passaic, and Warren counties, the forested ridges of the Highlands and the Kittatinny, hold most of them, with Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, Stokes State Forest, and Wawayanda and High Point state parks anchoring the named places. Scattered reports reach the inner suburbs, but the pattern is northwestern.
A returned native in a crowded state
Black bears were nearly gone from New Jersey by the middle of the twentieth century and worked back into the northwest from New York and Pennsylvania as the region’s farm country reforested. They returned to the most densely populated state in the country, and they have adapted to it, denning in thickets within earshot of neighborhoods and foraging the wooded edges where suburbs meet the Highlands. Bears that find human food learn to seek it, which is why a bear near homes should be given room and why garbage and feeders in bear country belong under lock and key.
The long feeding season
New Jersey’s milder climate lets bears stay active late. Records rise steeply in May and June as bears emerge hungry and young animals disperse, then continue through fall while bears feed on acorns and other mast to build fat for the den. Only the deep winter months, December through February, go quiet.
Status in New Jersey
NatureServe lists the American black bear as SNR, Unranked, in New Jersey, meaning no state conservation rank has been assigned. The species is native, and its modern presence is a recolonization of its historic range rather than an introduction.
Full species profile
