Conservation/Wildlife: Black Bears in Texas, 1
Louisiana black bear cub, image courtesy www.edf.org
This is Passport to Texas
By 1900, Louisiana black bear were as good as gone from East Texas.
15- About that time, or in the late 1800s, as East Texas became more and more settled, black bears were essentially killed out by unregulated hunting and the expansion of farms, towns, cities, roads, etc.
Dave Holdermann is a wildlife diversity biologist working out of Tyler, who keeps track of this federally threatened species.
11— Today we see a few bears venturing out of neighboring states back into Texas, but we have no indication that there’s a breeding population of black bears in East Texas.
The bears entering Texas from neighboring states are likely the sub species Americana or American Black Bear. Parks and Wildlife will carefully monitor and manage natural colonization of the species in East Texas.
22— If bears come into this region – most likely from Arkansas or Oklahoma – we’re going to monitor that process and attempt to deal with any problems that might arise between bears and people. But, we would not intercede, necessarily, to eliminate those bears. So, we would allow that natural colonization process.
How you can help biologists keep track of black bears in Texas – that’s tomorrow.
The Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration project supports our series.
For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
Passport to Texas is a 
Passport to Texas is made available by: