Only two mammals in Tennessee’s atlas have more records than the black bear, and the bear’s 3,638 reports belong overwhelmingly to one end of the state. Great Smoky Mountains National Park alone accounts for 1,474 of them, Sevier and Blount counties top the list, and the rest follow the high country through Cherokee National Forest, the Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness, and Big South Fork.
The Smokies engine
The Smokies’ unbroken mature forest, rich cove hardwoods, and stacked elevations are close to ideal black bear country, and the park functions as a reservoir from which bears spill into surrounding national forest and mountain communities. Even inside that core, seeing one is luck rather than plan; bears feed most at dawn and dusk, keep to cover by day, and usually slip off before a person knows one is near. Bears habituated to human food are the dangerous exception, and feeding one, directly or through carelessly stored garbage, is how those animals are made.
A long, food-driven year
Records climb steeply in April as bears leave their dens, stay high through July while bears breed and young animals disperse, and continue through fall as hyperphagia takes over and feeding on acorns fills their days. Only January and February go quiet, the depth of the denning season, when cubs are born. West of the mountains the record thins to scattered wanderers rather than resident bears.
Status in Tennessee
NatureServe ranks the American black bear S3, Vulnerable, in Tennessee, a statewide rank that reflects how tightly the resident population is confined to the eastern mountains. The species is native to the state.
Full species profile
