TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) – Photos circulating online recently have people wondering, what are the odds of seeing something as big as a black bear, or even a cub, in northeast Kansas?
A picture taken by a Shawnee Heights resident this past Saturday in their driveway quickly gained attention throughout northeast Kansas.
Google images told them it was likely a black bear. What are the odds of that? We asked the zoo’s bear expert, and he said, “Almost zero.”
“I’m leaning more towards coyote,” Said Northern Carnivore Keeper Tracey Henderson from the Topeka Zoo. “I could see more understandably by the Colorado border, but I would say absolutely not.”
“Black bears, for example, will be significantly larger,” said Zoo Conservation Director Dennis Dinwiddie. “Even the cubs would be significantly larger than that photograph. They can be up to several hundred pounds.”
However, Matt Peek, a wildlife biologist with the Kansas Wildlife and Parks department, after reviewing the photo, said, “This is a raccoon.” He went on to say it was possibly sick, but the picture was inconclusive.
Was a black bear currently roaming around Shawnee County? Not likely. But let’s take a look at the current range of the North American black bear. If you take a look right here at Kansas, the closest place you will find a black bear full-time is between Missouri and Arkansas.
Henderson added, “We don’t have black bears.”
“The last confirmed sighting of a black bear in Kansas was in 2021,” concluded Dinwiddie.
Even that was in southern Kansas.
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