Oregon’s 1,523 black bear records follow the state’s forested spine. The Cascades run through the middle of the map, Deschutes National Forest leads the named places, and Jefferson and Jackson counties top the county list, while a second band of reports fills the Coast Range from Tillamook south through Curry. The dry, open far east of the state barely registers.
Forest from the coast to the dry Cascades
Black bears are Oregon’s only bear, and they use nearly every kind of timbered country the state offers, from the wet, salmonberry-thick slopes of the Coast Range to the open ponderosa forest east of the Cascade crest. Western black bears also come in more than black; brown and cinnamon coats are common enough in the West that a light-colored bear here is still a black bear. They are solitary, wide-ranging, and largely nocturnal near people, so even in core range most Oregonians never lay eyes on one.
Two peaks in an active year
The monthly record rises in May and June, when bears emerge lean and feed hard on spring grasses, sedges, and insects, and swells again in September and October, when hyperphagia pushes them to feed nearly around the clock on late berries, acorns, and fruit at forest edges. Winter counts fall to a trickle as bears den, a stretch that runs shorter and lighter in the mild Coast Range than in the high Cascades but still keeps most bears out of circulation for months.
Status in Oregon
NatureServe ranks the American black bear S4, Apparently Secure, in Oregon, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
