Ohio's black bears are back, with a record 537 sightings in 2025

Ohio's black bear comeback keeps setting records. The Division of Wildlife's 2026 Black Bear Monitoring Report logged 537 sightings across 69 counties in 2025 — the most since tracking began in 1993. That's up from 370 sightings in 55 counties in 2024 and 260 in 49 counties in 2023. Over 1,500 bear encounters have been submitted to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources since 2022.

The animals were wiped out of Ohio in the mid-19th century. Forests covered about 95% of the state in 1803; by 1900 only 10% was wooded — long after the bears had gone. Habitat loss and unregulated hunting did the job, the same fate that met Ohio's bison, elk, cougars and wolves. Ohio had changed the species' status from 'extirpated' to 'endangered' by 1995, and the division has tracked observations since 1993.

Wildlife Biologist Katie Dennison credits the neighbours. 'West Virginia and Pennsylvania have seen a lot of growth in their bear populations. That means the bears are starting to naturally expand to Ohio,' she said. The report cautions that most Ohio bears are 'dispersing or transient males' that 'likely do not stay in the state for long.' Mariela Gantchoff, a wildlife ecologist and assistant professor of biology at the University of Dayton, has studied recolonizing bear populations for 13 years and says males are typically the first to push into new territory.

The sightings are turning up in driveways, gardens and breweries. Brandan Smith, of rural Coshocton, found a bear sifting through his rubbish bins in mid-July and watched it eat leftover freezer-burned ice cream from 25 feet away until police arrived half an hour later and chased it off with a spotlight. Near Fresno, Erica Gray spotted a bear with a white chest marking resting on a hillside, then coming back to her mother's bird feeder for the grape jelly meant to attract Baltimore orioles. Erin Peoples, principal of West Elementary School in Newcomerstown, got a Ring camera alert in mid-August showing a bear on her porch peering through a window — her teenage daughter texted back: 'Is that AI?'

Carla Miller watched a bear ignore a gathering crowd at the Wooly Pig Farm Brewery near Fresno in late August, sitting and eating pokeberries even after sows ran it off. On Oct. 3, raccoon hunter Don Dunlap was fishing about two miles from Wills Creek Dam when a bear stopped 50 yards away and stared at him. Coshocton County recorded 11 confirmed sightings in 2025, up from one in 2023 and one in 2024, and The Reporting Project collected 24 accounts in the county between May and November 2026, confirming 16 with photos or video.

Sightings are probably under-reported. The division of wildlife takes reports through ODNR's online Wildlife Reporting System or by phone at 1-800-WILDLIFE. Its advice for an encounter: stay calm and step away slowly, don't run or climb trees, and if a bear approaches, raise your arms, clap and shout to scare it off.