Coming soon to a road near you: bears!

 Coming soon to a road near you: bears!

A recent article in the July 2025 FUR-FISH-GAME magazine was titled, "Wandering Bears in the Midwest" by Jeffrey Goddin. He related accounts as well as state data of black bear sightings and breeding populations in states or places for which it's been hundreds of years.

He generously listed Iowa as having a population in the same list with Wisconsin and Minnesota, that was premature. Goddin did provide information on wandering bears in Illinois and Indiana, as well as recovering population in Ohio and Missouri. Almost all good news in my ledger.

There is a cost to everything. One of those costs is animal-vehicle incidents. As black bears increase in the Midwest it will be no surprise that more accidents will happen. A dark bear crossing the road in the wee hours or at night is a bad combination.

Case in point: June, northern Missouri. The Show Me staters were watching with great attention as a bear/s was making rounds hundreds of miles north of the state's established population. This is totally unexpected as young male bears will go on great journeys in the early summer to seek our new territory with available females.

Tragically the bear was hit by a vehicle in Macon County on Thursday, 12 June; it was euthanized owing to grave injury. What made this doubly tragic was the bear was a breeding age female.

Our car-centric culture and wildlife don't mix. I look to the wildlife overpass and underpass systems becoming normalized in the West as one part of the solution. Other ideas will come. They must because the bears are on their way.