KINGSTON SPRINGS, Tenn. (WZTV) \u2014 Residents in part of Kingston Springs are being urged to stay alert after a reported black bear sighting on Thursday.<\/p>\n
In a post shared on June 11 on Facebook, resident Erica Terry said a black bear was spotted walking through her yard and down the road in the Ranchettes neighborhood near Wax Wing Circle.<\/p>\n
Wildlife officials say black bears are generally shy and tend to avoid people, but residents should take precautions if a bear is spotted nearby.<\/p>\n
If you encounter a black bear:<\/p>\n
Stay calm and give the bear plenty of space.<\/p>\n
Do not approach, feed or attempt to follow the animal.<\/p>\n
Keep pets indoors or on a leash.<\/p>\n
Secure garbage, pet food and bird feeders that could attract bears.<\/p>\n
If a bear approaches, make yourself appear large, make noise, and slowly back away. Do not run.<\/p>\n
Comment with Bubbles<\/p>\n
JOIN THE CONVERSATION (1)<\/p>\n
Black bears are native to Tennessee, and sightings have become increasingly common as bear populations continue to expand into new areas of the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KINGSTON SPRINGS, Tenn. (WZTV) \u2014 Residents in part of Kingston Springs are being urged to stay alert after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":699360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":["post-699359","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\/699359","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=699359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/699360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}