Are Bear Attacks on Hikers Really Increasing? The Reality Is Complicated.

This April, hikers on two fashionable Nice Smoky Mountains Nationwide Park trails started reporting troubling experiences with black bears. On Ramsey Cascades Path, a bear approached two teams of hikers and stole their backpacks, whereas one other charged a customer. The weekend prior, three teams of hikers skilled run-ins with daring bruins alongside the Abrams Fall Path, with one hiker a chew after venturing right into a closed part of the park. The incidents had been among the many first of a number of high-profile bear encounters to land within the information, which might later embrace Glacier Nationwide Park’s first deadly bear assault in 28 years. Hikers and politicians alike reacted with alarm, with former Inside Secretary and present U.S. Consultant Ryan Zinke utilizing the incident to resume his push to delist grizzlies.

Are human-bear conflicts truly on the rise? It’s difficult. We break down what hikers ought to learn about coexisting with the U.S.’s greatest terrestrial predators in 2026.

Transcript

When you’ve paid consideration to the information recently, you’ve most likely learn loads about bears. This Might there have been a sequence of encounters within the US between bears and hikers that ended fairly badly for the hikers. Within the early a part of the month, two hikers had been injured in Yellowstone’s first grizzly assault of the yr, which resulted within the park closing a big swath of its trails. Shortly after that, Glacier recorded its first deadly bear assault in almost 30 years when a lacking hiker was discovered useless with accidents in keeping with a bear assault. Lower than a month after that, Glacier noticed one other severe bear assault when a hiker ran right into a grizzly and suffered severe accidents.

Within the wake of those encounters, many hikers are asking: Are bear incidents changing into extra frequent? To start with, no, bear assaults are usually not spiking this yr. It might appear that manner from studying the information as a result of bear assaults get a variety of protection together with on this publication. However, as Chris Servheen, the previous grizzly bear restoration coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, instructed Exterior final month, bear assaults are nonetheless actually, actually uncommon. On common, grizzlies kill both one or zero folks within the Decrease 48 yearly, and that’s a fairly unbelievable quantity when you think about how many individuals recreate in locations like Glacier and Yellowstone. Nonetheless, it additionally signifies that just a few tragic coincidences can skew that common fairly a bit.

However, if you take a look at developments during the last 10 to twenty years, it does appear that human-bear encounters have gotten extra frequent. A number of research have discovered that individuals and bears are coming into battle an increasing number of usually. To present you an instance, my residence state of Colorado discovered that there was a 15% rise in sightings and battle in 2025 over the common of the continuing six years.

So, why is that? Nicely, there are a few causes, and as traditional, one is local weather change. As excessive climate occasions have change into an increasing number of frequent, they’ve actually wreaked havoc on bears’ meals sources. There have been an increasing number of years the place issues like berry crops have failed, forcing bears to search for their energy nearer to folks. And the second cause: There are extra of us and extra of them. Out of doors recreation is extra fashionable than ever, which signifies that extra persons are venturing into bears’ habitat. There are additionally extra folks shifting into what we name the wildland-urban interface, which is the place our habitat intersects with bears. And, there are extra bears: California has seen its bear populations develop by about 45% over the previous 10 years. That signifies that there are extra bears on the market within the woods to run into.

So, what does that each one imply for hikers? Nicely, it’s extra necessary than ever to be bear conscious. Most bear assaults will be staved off by doing issues like mountaineering in a bunch, making noise when you hike, and carrying a deterrent like bear spray. Storing meals correctly can be key, as food-conditioned bears have been behind encounters which have closed trails just like the AT. Bears aren’t essentially an animal we should be afraid of. Many, many individuals recreate in bear nation yearly, and the overwhelming majority of them do it completely safely. However bears are an animal that deserves our respect, and displaying up with a little bit bit of data can go a good distance.