A black bear sighting is gaining traction online after an Osage Beach man posted several pictures and a video of a bear that was seen near a dumpster in a residential area in Osage Beach.<\/p>\n
“There are going to be more people in the woods, more people on the water, more food, just people out, just be situationally aware,” Coen said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Tim Coen says he’s never come across a black bear and says he’s always wanted to.<\/p>\n
So, when it happened, he didn’t hesitate to grab his phone, to take pictures and a video.<\/p>\n
“Dude, where is my camera? I got to get this. I am 52 years old, and I have never seen a bear in Missouri. We start snapping pictures, and he is just over there forging around the dumpsters,” Coen explained.<\/p>\n
Tim Coen says he moved to the Lake of the Ozarks area about a year ago from Kansas City.<\/p>\n
Coen says he was helping unload new furniture at his work, Matt Smith Real Estate, along Osage Beach Parkway, when they saw the bear near a dumpster about 50 feet away.<\/p>\n
“The whole thing didn’t last 5 minutes at most. I thought it was pretty cool, honestly. I had heard there are bears down here, but I have just never seen one. And so for me it was pretty cool, and it was pretty cool for the rest of the guys too,” Coen added.<\/p>\n
According to Nate Bowersock, Black Bear Biologist for the Missouri Department of Conservation, we are entering peak season when bears are most active.<\/p>\n
“We typically see bears come out of dens late March\/ early April. But once we hit May, this is when a lot of food sources start to become a lot better quality for bears, so we see a lot more movement from bears and a lot more activity,” Bowersock said.<\/p>\n
Bowersock says bear sightings are not very common, but it’s understandable why the bear was in a residential area \u2013 for food.<\/p>\n
“The biggest thing is if bears are getting access to food. The bear population continues to grow and expand, and that does mean bears are more likely to show up in more developed areas off and on, but at the end of the day, bears are just looking for food,” Bowersock said.<\/p>\n
He says Missouri’s bear population is right around 1200 bears, with many of them found south of the I-44 corridor.<\/p>\n
He says that if anyone sees a bear repeatedly appearing in a residential area, they should contact the Department of Conservation immediately.<\/p>\n
Coen says he wants others coming to the lake area this summer to know that bears are out there.<\/p>\n
“There are going to be more people in the woods, more people on the water, more food, just people out, just be situationally aware,” Coen said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A black bear sighting is gaining traction online after an Osage Beach man posted several pictures and a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":667590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":["post-667589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667589","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=667589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/667590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}