Arkansas is home to an estimated 3,000-5,000 bears. | Photo credit Tomas Malik; license-free photo courtesy of Pexels.com.
When two fatal black bear encounters shook Arkansas this fall – one near Mulberry Mountain in Franklin County and another at Sam’s Throne in Newton County – the news echoed through the Ozarks. However, according to Dr. Don White Jr., a wildlife ecology professor at the University of Arkansas at Monticello with 33 years of bear research, the incidents are tragic outliers, not signs of a rising threat.
“It has been decades since we’ve even heard of a bear–human encounter, let alone physical contact, let alone a death,” White said. “They’re just exceedingly rare.”
White, who has studied both grizzlies and black bears across the country, estimates there are roughly 3,000 to 5,000 black bears in Arkansas, citing data from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. That’s the highest number since pre-settlement days, but he cautions that estimating populations statewide remains difficult. “Bears are secretive and have low detectability,” he explained. “They’re hard to count.”
Despite the population’s growth, the professor says the real story behind the recent incidents involves ecology, not aggression. This fall’s dry conditions left few acorns, or “mast,” on the forest floor during the bears’ most important feeding window.
“It was a nutritionally stressful time,” White said. “Bears come out of spring with abundant vegetation, then move into a dry summer before acorns drop. That creates a six-to-eight-week window where it’s tough to make a living.”
Add in a seasonal surge of sub-adult males, roughly 2 years old, newly kicked out by their mothers and learning to survive alone, and the odds of misbehavior rise.
“They’re the age and sex class most likely to get into trouble; raiding dumpsters, hitting garages, causing issues,” White said. “They’re stressed and might see humans as an easy source of food.”
When acorns finally returned later in the season, the conflicts stopped. “Once mast became available, the need dropped,” White said. “They’re less aggressive and we won’t see issues again except under extremely rare circumstances.”
Still, those rare circumstances can potentially turn deadly, especially when people get too close. One victim reportedly took photos as the bear advanced.
The second case, at Sam’s Throne, remains a bit more complicated. Investigators found acorns in the bear’s stomach, which could mean it wasn’t hungry. White believes ‘food conditioning’ could be to blame. “If a bear starts associating people with food, that’s dangerous,” he said. “A fed bear becomes a dead bear.”
White says similar challenges exist on the Ozark Highlands Trail, where hikers occasionally report bears lingering near campsites. “It’s usually because someone fed it before,” he said. “The next campers don’t know the bear is now conditioned to that spot.”
The lesson, White insists, is simple but vital: control human food. “Bears are basically big stomachs with legs,” he said. “If we control food, we control behavior.”
He also pointed to a possible ecological ripple effect; feral hogs, which he calls “a non-native species causing havoc.” Hogs devour the same acorns deer, turkeys, and bears depend on.
White recalled dissecting a trapped hog and finding “a bread-loaf-sized mass of acorn mash” inside its stomach. “That’s food no longer available to native wildlife,” he said. “It’s an ecosystem shakedown.”
For hikers and campers, his advice was clear: “Make noise so bears know you’re coming … keep food locked in a car or a building and … never feed wildlife. These are simple principles that can save both human and bear lives,” he said.
In the end, White doesn’t see it as a bear problem; he sees a human one. “We just have to learn to live with them,” he said. “They’ve been here longer than we have.”