In Ohio, bears are not
just going over the mountains they also are traversing the Lake Erie
shoreline.
Not surprising then the
number of black bear sightings continue to grow, even in Northeast
Ohio.
Perhaps, especially in
Northeast Ohio, too.
A recent incident within
the past few weeks came from Lake Metroparks. It seems a black bear
had visited the home of the parks system's biologist who lives at the
agency's 84-acre Lakeshore Reservation in North Perry Village.
On returning home the
biologist discovered that his bird feeders were demolished with
confirmation the culprit being a bear came from the scat the bruin
left behind.
Yet such sightings are far
from being rare, certainly they are more common than even just a few
years ago.
Last year the Ohio
Division of Wildlife recorded a whopping 224 black bear sightings of
which 65 were confirmed.
Sighting confirmation
comes via some form of documentation such a digital photograph from a
trail camera or by an inspection and verification by a Wildlife
Division official.
A breakdown of the raw
total sightings included reports from 36 counties.
Leading the pack was
Portage County with 36 sightings. This figure was followed by the 22
reports from Trumbull County and the 20 reports from Ashtabula
County.
Geauga County's black bear
sighting tally numbered 17, Lake County registered 10 sightings, and
Cuyahoga County was scored with six sightings.
In 2011, the Wildlife
Division received a total of 152 sightings from 32 of Ohio's 88
counties. Of the 152 figure, 60 sightings were confirmed.
Among the totals were 22
for Geauga County (the most for any county in the state). 20 for
Ashtabula County, nine each for Lake and Trumbull counties, and four
for Cuyahoga County.
While it is important to
remember the majority of these reports were multiple sightings of
bears that spent a lot of time moving about, the figures do strongly
suggest that Ohio
is increasingly becoming a
place where representatives of the species are at least visiting.
Likely too a goodly number
of the bears observed or reported are spill-overs from Pennsylvania,
mostly young males looking for a place to set up their own territory.
- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
A mother bear with two cubs were spotted in Spencer, Ohio during the
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