Vermont’s 2,079 black bear records describe a thoroughly statewide animal. Washington County leads with 442, but every one of Vermont’s fourteen counties contributes, from the spine of the Green Mountains and Green Mountain National Forest through the Breadloaf Wilderness to Groton State Forest and the Wenlock Wildlife Management Area in the northeast. Even the settled heart of the state appears, with records from Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park and the Jericho Research Forest.
A forest omnivore tuned to the mast years
A black bear is a large animal living mostly on small foods: spring sedges and new leaves, ants and beetle larvae torn from rotting logs, summer berries, and the autumn acorn and beechnut crops that decide how fat a bear enters its den. Vermont’s hardwood ridges deliver that menu across huge, connected forest blocks, which is why the record spreads so evenly rather than clumping in a single reserve. For all those numbers, a bear encounter remains unusual. Black bears avoid people deliberately, and most Vermonters who hike these woods for years never see one.
The denning rhythm behind the calendar
Reports climb from April through a May peak as bears leave their dens lean and hungry, hold high through the September berry-and-mast season, then taper off as denning begins in late fall. The record never fully goes silent: a scattering of December through February reports fits an animal that sleeps lightly in winter and can rouse during warm spells or when a den is disturbed, unlike a true hibernator.
Status in Vermont
NatureServe ranks the American black bear S5, Secure, in Vermont, and the species is native across the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
