Density, space use, and human-bear interactions in a recolonizing American black bear population in southeastern Oklahoma

As they recolonize portions of their lost range in southeastern Oklahoma, American black bear populations are now expanding into areas that are anthropogenically altered. Although human population density is low in this region, human disturbance is still high due to timber harvest, agriculture, and roadways. We sought to further our understanding of how black bears respond to human impacts in this region through spatially explicit capture recapture (SCR) modeling to understand the connection between demography and space use, as well as seasonal resource selection functions to identify space use. SCR modeling estimated an average of 0.11 bears/100km², which is comparable to nearby study areas. Density was strongly associated with longitude, forest cover, and weakly positively associated with human impact index. Abundance estimates (1,552 ± 545 bears) were within expectations considering the 6% population growth estimated by previous studies. Resource selection functions for post-denning, summer, and hyperphagia seasons identified seasonally variable use of roads at the landscape and home-range scales, however, there was little variation between diurnal and nocturnal resource use. Areas of human disturbance (i.e., roads, human impact index) and forest cover, especially deciduous forest cover, greatly influence bear space use. Levels of human tolerance appeared to influence bear space use, with selection varying over seasons and diel periods. We also examined the influence of humans on black bear space use specifically during their hyperphagia period, examining resource selection before, during, and after a black bear hunting season. Bears shifted to avoidance strategies at the start of a hunting season by avoiding all roadways, despite roads acting as travel corridors for bears prior to the start of the hunting season. Bears also increased their avoidance of other human disturbed areas including timber plantations and shifted to using more rugged terrains during the day, suggesting bears are using rugged terrains for cover from hunters, but using less rugged terrains during evenings for movement or foraging opportunities. Fine-scale activity patterns also revealed that activity patterns shifted across seasons and increased in nocturnality during and after the hunting season, likely due to target and non-target hunters.