{"id":381642,"date":"2026-01-01T12:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T12:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/381642\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T12:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T12:58:09","slug":"tennessee-sees-rise-in-black-bear-encounters-as-population-grows-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/381642\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennessee sees rise in black bear encounters as population grows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WZTV) \u2014 The Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency (TWRA) has issued a warning about increased interactions with black bears as the state&#8217;s population continues to grow. <\/p>\n<p>The agency reports there are nearly 6,000 black bears across Tennessee. In 2024, TWRA received 1,700 emergency calls related to black bears, with 25% of those calls being garbage-related.<\/p>\n<p>The agency advises residents to lock food in cars and use bear-resistant containers for garbage storage.<\/p>\n<p>TWRA Vice Chairman Greg Davenport emphasized the future need for more resources to handle the increasing number of bear-related calls.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Now we&#8217;ve got a pro-grow state which is wonderful, but our human-bear contact comes at a cost,&#8221; Davenport says. &#8220;And you&#8217;ve got to ask, &#8216;Does the agency have the capacity? Capacity means more funding.&#8221; Comment with Bubbles<\/p>\n<p>JOIN THE CONVERSATION (1)<\/p>\n<p>The TWRA also cautions against feeding bears, as it encourages them to return for more food.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WZTV) \u2014 The Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency (TWRA) has issued a warning about increased interactions with&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-381642","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}