LIke in so much of the USA, Black Bears were virtually gone from Oklahoma at the turn of the 20th century.............In the late 1960s, the bears began making a comeback in Oklahoma after the successful reintroduction of 250 black bears in the Ouachita and Ozark Mountains of Arkansas..... That initial rewilding from northern Minnesota and Manitoba, Canada grew to several thousand bears in the mountains of Arkansas, which then expanded into southwest Missouri and eastern Oklahoma.......It is estimated that Oklahoma now houses some 500-1000 bruins with a hunting season that has been in effect since 2009...............Oklahoma State University has been studying the Bears and was excited to announce that female to male sex ratio of the bears has tilted female which suggests a stable population forming in the state

http://www.ardmoreite.com/article/20150330/NEWS/150339968

• OSU graduate 

• students conduct

•  black bear

•  population studies

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• By Sean Hubbard

  Posted Mar. 30, 2015 at 3:00 PM
  Updated at 6:57 PM 
  
  STILLWATER
  

  As the weather warms and vegetation begins to grow,

  
  

  the black bears living in southeastern Oklahoma will

  
  

  begin to come out of their dens.

   Before they do, however, graduate students in

  
  

  Oklahoma State University’s Department of Natural

  
  

  Resource Ecology and Management, went to the

  
  

  known locations of several bears to gather some

  
  

  information. Morgan Pfander, doing her graduate

  
  

  research on the bear population in and around

  
  

  the Ouachita Mountains, recently led a crew of

  
  

  nearly 20 to check on a momma bear and her cub.

  
  

  

  
  
  

  “We record weight,

  
  

  chest girth, sex

  
  

  and distinguishing

  
  

  marks for the cubs,”

  
  

  Pfander said. “We

  
  

  also give it a PIT

  
  

  tag, a passive integrated transponder, which we

  
  

  can scan for identification purposes if we ever

  
  

  catch the cub again.”

   To date, the researchers have 66 bears

  
  

  marked with the central objective of

  
  

  determining the current population status of

  
  

  American black bear in southeast Oklahoma.

   “I am in the field throughout the year, running

  
  

  trap lines in the summer to capture bears for

  
  

  the mark/recapture portion of my study,

  
  

  tracking collared bears to their dens in late

  
  

  winter, and visiting dens in late spring to

  
  

  collect reproduction data and vegetation

  
  

  measurements at the den sites,” Pfander said.

  Oklahoma black bears were all but eliminated

  
  

  by the early 1900s, but recent decades have

  
  

  seen bears recolonize in portions of their old

  
  

  stomping grounds. After initial studies on

  
  

  the species’ demographics and range, the

  
  

  Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation

  
  

  opened a hunting season on the bears in 2009.

  
  

  Questions soon arose regarding the effects

  
  

  of the hunting season on the population, leading

  
  

  to the funding of several graduate projects,

  
  

  including Pfander’s.

  “Although we only have preliminary data,

  
  

  we are finding a female-biased sex ratio,”

  
  

  she said. “Ten years ago they didn’t find

  
  

  that the sex ratio was statistically different

  
  

  from 1-to-1.”

  
  

  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Female-biased sex

  
  

  ratios have been noted in other core habitat

  
  

  areas of well-established black bear

  
  

  populations, so the thought is the population

  
  

  has “settled in” a bit more since the early

  
  

  studies, when the bears were just beginning

  
  

  to reestablish themselves in the state. 

  “There are not many places where a large

  
  

  carnivore species has been able to naturally

  
  

  recolonize part of its former range, but

  
  

  it has here in Oklahoma,” Pfander said.

  
  

  “The timeline of this recolonization and

  
  

  the implementation of a hunting season

  
  

  presents us with a unique combination of

  
  

  demographic influences, as well.”

  It will not be long before the bears come

  
  

  out of hibernation and start their cycle all

  
  

  over again. Females will breed in the

  
  

  summer, but delay the implantation of

  
  

  the blastocyst until the fall, allowing

  
  

  them to give birth in late winter during

  
  

  hibernation.