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Black bears have long been viewed as forest-dwelling animals.
However, an unbroken expanse of forest doesn’t provide enough food for
black bears. They need berry patches and stream bottoms to satisfy
their appetite for plants and insects.
You can find black bears in virtually all forested areas of New Mexico.
Females usually maintain a home range of five to seven square miles.
Males on an average occupy an area of 25 square miles, although they
can extend their territories to as much as 50 square miles if habitat
quality deteriorates.
Under ordinary conditions black bears display
mutual avoidance of each other rather than territorial aggression. A
sub adult female’s territory will overlap her mother’s range. Sub-adult
males sometimes disperse over great distances, which help maintain the
viability of the gene pool by reducing the incidence of inbreeding.
When habitat becomes limited or degraded, sub-adult males may encroach
on the territory of sub-adult females and force them into marginal
areas near human population. This is precisely what happened in 1989
when 23 bears came into Albuquerque. All were sub-adult females driven
from their range during a period of drought. |
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