“Everybody around here has a black bear story,” says Beth Kuhn.
And Kuhn has likely heard them all. As outreach coordinator for the Rivanna Master Naturalists, the local chapter of the state’s master naturalist program, Kuhn helps deploy a cadre of volunteers to teach Living With Black Bears. Because in Virginia, black bears are our neighbors—and we need to know how to co-exist with them.
The impetus for the Living With Black Bears program started with the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources. Over the last decade, DWR saw an increase in calls to its Wildlife Conflict hotline from people reporting concerns about black bears—more than its 16 wildlife biologists, who cover the entire state, could handle. These calls weren’t about bear attacks; they were from people who saw bears in their area, or in their yard, or (worse) on their back porch…