After a snow-packed winter like this one, Pennsylvania’s black bears have taken their time leaving the den.
The males stir first from their winter torpor. Females with tiny cubs born over the winter and yearlings come next.
After months hunkered down in a rocky den or ground nest, you’d think they’d be hungry as all get-out and on the move, foraging for food.
It’s true that bears can lose 30 percent of their body weight over winter, but water is what they need first. They’ll spend days re-hydrating, eating snow if open water is scarce.
Searching for food comes next, and that can mean encounters between humans, their bird feeders, garbage, dogs, and bears.
The people at the Pennsylvania Game Commission know bears.
Top of the list? Never, ever, for any reason, feed bears.
Keep in mind that bears are opportunists. If it smells or looks like food, they will go for it — no matter that you intended it for your dog, the birds, or a barbecue.
And, when it comes to food, bears are a quick study. If they get food even once from humans or near humans, they can soon become a nuisance — or a danger that requires drastic measures… which is why the expression “a fed bear is a dead bear” is all too true.
The home range of female black bears in the Poconos is about six square miles. The range for males is even larger, averaging about 20 square miles and sometimes more than sixty.
As they roam the woods, they will eat carrion, small mammals, fish, snakes and salamanders, insects and eggs, but they are mainly vegetarians.
They eat huge amounts of succulent plants (skunk cabbage, anyone?), fruit, berries, roots, acorns, and hickory and beech nuts.
All this rooting and snuffling around for food stirs up and aerates the forest floor by turning over the soil and decayed wood.
Spreading copious scat far and wide also spreads seeds and nutrients, helping to keep the woods healthy and diverse.
What’s good for woods is good for the creeks that flow through them.
It’s all connected; as the apex predator in the Poconos, black bears are key to the natural home we all share.
Black bears aren’t just icons of Pocono wildlife — they’re essential to the living network that sustains the creeklands of the Brodhead watershed.
Seeing a black bear — at a distance — is one of the great thrills of living in Penn’s Woods. It’s up to all of us to keep ourselves, and the bears, safe.
For more information visit the BearWise website.
The Brodhead Watershed Association protects water quality and quantity throughout our area. Get involved! Become a member!
(Photo: Black bears quickly learn where a good meal can be found. Protect yourself, your pets, and the bears: store bird food, garbage, and anything edible securely.)
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[Posted: April 1, 2026] PA Environment Digest
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