Bear sightings rise in Minnesota suburbs

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Bear activity has been increasing across the Twin Cities metro recently. Just in the last week, we've have had bear sightings in Burnsville, Elk River, and Shoreview.

[00:00:11]Uh as all of these have been caught on home surveillance cameras.

[00:00:16]Uh I want to show you a video now. This one is out of Elk River, I believe. Is that right? Yep. Uh so here you see two black bears in Elk River. They were caught on a camera wandering through a neighborhood near Lake Owasso during the early morning hours. Just incredible to see them right there. So close to cars here in the Twin Cities metro where this is not very common. You know, some parts of the country you see this all the time.

[00:00:44]Not here. Um well, and wildlife experts say that spring and early summer are peak times for black bears. But uh they shouldn't be in residential neighborhoods, and that's why we wanted to bring in Spencer Peter from the North American Bear Center. I think he's getting on the line here shortly.

[00:01:03]Uh Spencer, thanks for joining me.

[00:01:07]>> Appreciate it.

[00:01:08]>> Uh what do you What's your take on this?

[00:01:11]So why are we seeing so many bears in residential neighborhoods in recent weeks?

[00:01:18]>> Um maybe not as specifically in recent weeks, but in a longer timeline, uh we do know that the bear population here in Minnesota is on the rise both in populace with the amount of bears in the state as well as their geographic coverage. Um and so we're seeing them in areas where the past 50 years we haven't, you know, such as Elk River and stuff like that.

[00:01:41]>> So it's my understanding that younger bears right now are on the search for food and territory, and maybe that's why they're on the move so close to residential areas.

[00:01:51]>> Correct. So this time of year is when the yearlings, is what we would call them cuz it's a 2-year reproductive cycle for the black bear. The cubs or the yearlings, they stay with mom for 16 to 17 months. And so, this time of year is when she's kicking them out in preparation to reproduce again. And so, you have lots of young bears who are learning how the world works, finding their own territories, and looking for food, which is somewhat scarce at this time of the year here in Minnesota. And so, bird feeders, grills, pet food, those attractants that we have as humans are sometimes commonly sought after by these younger bears or just bears in general that are still learning to find their territory and how the world works for them.

[00:02:31]>> So, I know you said that, you know, the population is growing here in Minnesota.

[00:02:37]But, you know, in each one of these neighborhoods that had bear sightings, these residents said they'd never seen bears before. So, is this the new normal?

[00:02:47]>> So, it I mean, it's looking like again, they're expanding like we like we talked about. Um generally, when you have high populations of people and a bear population, it's not a great mix.

[00:02:56]And that would be the case that's happening there.

[00:02:59]I'm from the Champlin, Minnesota area. I grew up there. We had a bear one time in the front yard, and it's all it's all Fox talked about that summer, actually.

[00:03:07]It was a big deal. It was in Blaine, and everybody talked about it. That seems to be now becoming more common. Now, also keep in mind, you know, things like Ring doorbell cameras, everybody has them now. And so, part of it could be that now we're seeing things normally that would have gone unseen and nobody noticed before.

[00:03:24]So, that that could be part of it. But, we do know that again, they are increasing in the areas where again, these communities in the greater suburb area didn't have to deal with bears for a while, and they've grown accordingly.

[00:03:35]Now, they may have to as we see that rise, but it also could start coming down.

[00:03:40]And maybe then we won't see them continue to expand into those areas.

[00:03:44]But, only time will tell, really.

[00:03:47]>> Last summer, I actually was in Comstock, Wisconsin reporting on a black bear attack. A woman there got mauled and injured by a bear.

[00:03:56]Are black bears generally aggressive towards humans?

[00:04:01]>> It's a great question.

[00:04:03]Generally, no. I'd say, you know, everything we talk about with nature and biology falls into one of those bell-shaped curves, you know, you got outliers on each end, but most stuff is accountable for in the middle on an average. And by far and away, they're not generally aggressive towards humans.

[00:04:18]However, they are one of the few animals in the world today that can easily hurt a human if they want to. They have the physical strength to do that. There's not a lot of animals left like that on the planet, but that is one of them. And so, um it's just not necessarily common.

[00:04:33]You don't hear about all the encounters where this person sees a bear and they run away. It's not a very enticing, fun encounter, obviously, but we do tend to hear about those outliers more, the the attacks. And then, of course, like the break-ins of the cabins where the bear steals a coffee pot and takes it to go or something like that. They tend to be reported on and talked about more than all the times one just runs across the trail or runs in front of you in the road. Um but generally speaking, no, they tend to be rather timid and shy.

[00:04:57]Um but again, things like this can and will happen.

[00:05:01]>> Then what could lead a black bear to attack a person?

[00:05:05]>> Good question. Um there's lots of different things um that can perpetuate an attack. Um dogs account for a lot of the black bear specific attacks on humans, not necessarily grizzly or brown bear attacks, um because bears and dogs naturally don't get along. Um in fact, the gray wolf, one of our natural wild dogs we have here in Minnesota, and the American black bear, um natural enemies and predators of each other. And so, um sometimes what happens, or a common instance of a bear attack, is a dog is involved, and then the human gets involved, and then you have a bear attack. Um sometimes bears being food conditioned or habituated can possibly lead to more human-bear interaction or conflicts. And the more of that you have, the more likelihood that you could have an issue.

[00:05:50]Um that once they decide, you know, they learn that there's no negative consequences and there's a high caloric value reward for, you know, human food or other um foods that we have that would be better than some of their natural foods in terms of calorie density, then um that can once they lose that fear or they decide that there's no negatives of coming around looking for this stuff, um they sometimes um learn to seek it out.

[00:06:13]And so, those things can contribute. So, one thing that we always talk about with bear safety is controlling the food, making sure the bears can't get it because once they get it, they'll never forget, and they have phenomenal long-term memories. And so, controlling the food and making sure it's not available, our human food, to the wild bear population is really important in mitigating human-bear conflict.

[00:06:33]>> Mhm.

[00:06:34]Uh I had to double-check because I wasn't sure if my memory served me correctly, but it was that with that one that I covered in Wisconsin a year ago, uh the bear was allegedly trying to protect one of her cubs, and uh the person who got attacked, her dog was out. And so, there was some of that, the dog involvement, the cub, um which obviously is going to heighten a situation.

[00:06:57]>> Correct.

[00:06:57]>> You know, where I grew up in Northern California, this has always, you know, you know that you never leave food in your car. You can't even leave a wrapper in your car. But when we're talking about Burnsville, Shoreview, uh you know, this is um this is an unusual ask to say, "Hey, you might have bears coming in now. Can't leave wrappers in the car."

[00:07:19]>> Right. You you you're absolutely accurate. I again, growing up in the that relative general area, it is kind of wild to me still to wrap my head around the fact that they're around. Um I I experienced seeing some scat of a bear um in Dayton, Minnesota, which again, I hung out with all the time and played around at the public parks and stuff there, never saw any signs of bears. We never had to worry about anything like that. You know, when you're out with her a dog walk or anything like that, that was never something that we had to think about. And like you said, just securing food but down to the wrappers and stuff is something we didn't really have to consider other than, you know, for raccoons, which is significantly easier to keep food away from a raccoon than a black bear.

[00:07:59]Um and yeah, I I think ideally this doesn't continue to happen or there's um hopefully they don't continue expanding these areas where we have large populations of humans, but if it does, there might need to be some more general bear safety and education on how we go about dealing with this in the future if it's a trend that's going to continue.

[00:08:18]Um and then DNR does a good job of keeping track of those populations and reporting on an annual basis on where where that's going, up, down, stable, and stuff like that. And so, um they have a good monitor on it, which is great. Um but again, only time will tell, you know, how these things are going to play out. Um I'm hoping that yeah, we can kind of keep bears to restricted the upper northern third or half of the state where we've grown to in over the past 50 years to be used to them in the wild area, not so much obviously, you know, south of um you know, the Cambridge area. You kind of draw a line straight across Minnesota there. The general bear habitat or bear range is north of that, but we're increasingly commonly seeing them south of that lot, you know, that area. Um which again, over the past 50-ish years was probably not the case.

[00:09:03]>> Yeah, so interesting. Uh Spencer Peter from the North American Bear Center, I so appreciate you joining me today.