South Carolina’s 151 black bear records are modest in number and sharp in pattern. They split between the two corners where the species still holds resident ground: the Blue Ridge escarpment of the Upstate, where Greenville, Pickens, and Oconee counties lead, and the coastal plain of the northeast, where Horry County’s Lewis Ocean Bay Heritage Preserve carries the single largest cluster.
Two outposts of a mountain and swamp animal
The Upstate bears are the southern tail of the southern Appalachian population, working cove hardwoods and oak slopes through Caesars Head, Table Rock, and the Jocassee Gorges. The coastal bears are a different tradition, animals of Carolina bays, pocosins, and swamp forest, cover so thick that a large animal can live its life within miles of beach traffic and rarely be seen. Between the two strongholds the record thins to scattered wanderers, and most South Carolinians have never seen a bear in the state and never will.
A southern calendar
South Carolina’s warmth compresses the denning season. Records rise steeply to a June peak, when young bears disperse and adults travel during the breeding season, and stay scattered through fall as bears feed on mast and the soft fruits of the coastal plain. Even midwinter never quite goes silent, a hint that some southern bears den briefly, or hardly at all, in mild years.
Status in South Carolina
NatureServe ranks the American black bear S5, Secure, in South Carolina, and the species is native, though its resident range today is a small fraction of the state it once occupied.
Full species profile
