{"id":601568,"date":"2026-04-23T12:39:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T12:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/601568\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T12:39:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T12:39:11","slug":"black-bear-spotted-on-cobb-familys-front-porch-wsb-tv-channel-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/601568\/","title":{"rendered":"Black bear spotted on Cobb family\u2019s front porch \u2013 WSB-TV Channel 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

COBB COUNTY, Ga. \u2014 Parents and pet owners said a black bear has moved into their neighborhood, and they want help.<\/p>\n

The encounters are happening in the Huntington Woods subdivision of Marietta.<\/p>\n

Tiffany Brown told Channel 2\u2019s Courtney Francisco that concerns grow every day the bear inches closer to her and her neighbors.<\/p>\n

\u201cConcern for children, small pets, we have elderly doing walks in the neighborhood,\u201d said Brown.<\/p>\n

[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Brown\u2019s neighbor, Veronica Gana, also pointed out they are concerned the bear will become habituated in the neighborhood, get ran over in the busy area or hurt someone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really scared for the bear as well because he\u2019s displaced,\u201d said Gana.<\/p>\n

They asked if the bear was moving toward people because developers have cleared hundreds of acres of wooded area for a new subdivision near I-575.<\/p>\n

Georgia Department of Natural Resources Urban Wildlife Program Manager Ben McCullar said that\u2019s possible, but he said it is more likely happening due to a natural process that occurs each Spring.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when young male bears begin searching for their own territory.<\/p>\n

\u201cMother bear kicks out this young adolescent male to move South and establish its own territory,\u201d said McCullar. \u201cMany of these young bears follow their nose to metro Atlanta neighborhoods and stay longer than we would like them to.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said DNR only traps and moves bears in emergencies or extreme nuisance cases because most of the time, the bears die shortly after.<\/p>\n

He said cars often hit the bears in the unfamiliar area, or more dominant bears eat all the food resources there.<\/p>\n

TRENDING STORIES:<\/p>\n

He said DNR recommends neighbors get rid of all things that might attract the bear first. That can be things like deer feed, bird seed, water in bird baths and trash.<\/p>\n

He said once all of that is gone, give it two weeks. That can push the bear back into the woods.<\/p>\n

If not, DNR does offer a list of professional trappers that you can pay to remove nuisance bears.<\/p>\n

DNR said it has not tracked any confirmed cases of a black bear like the one in this neighborhood attacking people or killing pets in recent history.<\/p>\n

Loud noises usually scare them away first, according to DNR.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoing anything you can to instill a little bit of fear in the bear is usually all that it takes to encourage it to move away,\u201d said McCullar.<\/p>\n

So far, neighbors in this case said the suggestions are not working.<\/p>\n

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\u00a92026 Cox Media Group<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COBB COUNTY, Ga. \u2014 Parents and pet owners said a black bear has moved into their neighborhood, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[76384,104372,77230,33931,1746,261662,261663,3729,33932,3859,79,201,77226,33927],"class_list":{"0":"post-601568","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-channel_2","9":"tag-cobb_county","10":"tag-courtney_francisco","11":"tag-department_of_natural_resources","12":"tag-dnr","13":"tag-huntington_woods","14":"tag-interstate_575","15":"tag-local","16":"tag-metro_atlanta","17":"tag-program","18":"tag-science","19":"tag-wildlife","20":"tag-wsb","21":"tag-wsbsyndication"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601568","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=601568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}