It seems that almost every day black bears are in the news somewhere in Tennessee. Either someone sees one in an area where they’ve never been seen before or a bear waltzes into a candy shop in Gatlinburg. Or perhaps a social media post goes viral when someone captures video of a bear breaking into a car in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.<\/p>\n
Thirty years ago biologists estimated there were about 1,000 bears in Tennessee and the majority of those were inside the confines of the Great Smoky National Park. Now they estimate well over 6,000 black bears roam from the Great Smokies to Middle Tennessee, and they continue to gain ground. Love them or hate them, bears are becoming more and more a part of the daily lives of many Tennesseans.<\/p>\n
One of the men largely responsible for the resurgence of black bears passed away Sept. 1 at the age of 86. Dr. Michael Pelton, UT professor emeritus and wildlife biologist studied black bears for more than 30 years.<\/p>\n
According to his obituary, <\/a>when Dr. Pelton joined UT as a Ph.D. student in wildlife science he planned to continue his research on cottontail rabbits. However a phone call from the National Park Service during his first months at UT set the course for his life\u2019s work. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park was looking for someone to research its black bears. And that’s exactly what Pelton did for 32 years, with the aid of 58 different graduate students along the way.<\/p>\n Dr. Pelton’s research on black bears was one of the world\u2019s longest continuous research projects of any bear species. It helped lead to new management practices which have ultimately lead to the dramatic increases into Tennessee’s largest carnivore. From 1976 to 2000, he coordinated the Southern Appalachian Black Bear Study Group, a consortium of biologists and managers who oversee the region\u2019s black bears. In 2016 he was honored as one of the 100 most influential people in the history of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In 2012, the Society honored him with its top international award for applied wildlife management research, the Caesar Kleberg Award.<\/p>\n Dr. Pelton was routinely invited to present his work worldwide, but he was also known for his willingness to speak to small local groups like the Boy Scouts and nursing home residents.<\/p>\n In December 1999, Dr. Pelton retired from UT to his \u201cBear Run Farm\u201d in the Alleghany Mountains of Virginia with his wife, Tamra Willis. There they spent days improving its wildlife habitat, hunting and fishing, and hiking.<\/p>\n Contributions may be made in Pelton’s memory to either The Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association<\/a> or The International Association for Bear Research and Management.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It seems that almost every day black bears are in the news somewhere in Tennessee. Either someone sees…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":848008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":["post-848007","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\/848007","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=848007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/848008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}