A black bear seen on Ivy Street next to a trash bag and a knocked over trash bin in Harlan, Kentucky. (Courtesy Joe Meadors)
Over the course of his decades in Harlan, Mayor Joe Meadors has seen a resurgence of wildlife, including deer, elk, and turkeys that he never really saw as a kid growing up in Eastern Kentucky. He’s glad to “have them all” around his community.
But there’s another animal making a comeback that Meadors is less happy about: black bears.
“Right now, the bear population is plum out of sorts. There’s so many of them in the city of Harlan,” said Meadors. “They’ve just gotten out of hand because the population’s kind of been unchecked for a while.”
Meadors said what used to be an occasional black bear sighting in his city of 1,100, has become near constant. The bears, attracted to scraps of food in garbage, roam around almost everywhere imaginable in the city. They’re by the schools. They’re by the library. They’re being chased away by the city police department at night.
Meadors said he’s not portraying bears as the “bad guys”, but he is among some local elected officials in Eastern Kentucky who believe something needs to be done to manage or reduce the population. He said a friend’s kid had an encounter about a month ago with a protective mother bear with three cubs who growled at the kid, scaring the kid “to death.”
Black bears usually are very shy, have a solitary nature, and avoid people. Black bear attacks on humans are also exceedingly rare, though not unprecedented.
In 2010, a hiker in the Red River Gorge area of the Daniel Boone National Forest described what officials believed was the first bear attack in Kentucky in modern history. In September, Kentucky State Police said a trooper shot and killed a bear in Harlan County after the trooper said it lunged at him after finding its way into an elementary school’s field house.
Bell County Judge-Executive Albey Brock told the Lantern that he believes the black bear situation is “flirting” with the potential for a “horrific encounter” because of how often some bears are interacting with people.
Brock and Meadors have been in favor a further expansion of bear hunting in Eastern Kentucky, something that the chair of the state commission that crafts state hunting rules says he’s interested in.
Though both say addressing the problem is more complex than just increased hunting, including better management and containment of trash.
“We have to put enough pressure on the bear that they stay in the remote woods. I’m all for that,” Brock said, mentioning he doesn’t want to “eradicate” the bears. “They’ve got a natural instinct to be fearful, but it’s not strong enough. It will not override a stale box of Little Debbie’s that got thrown in the garbage.”
The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, the state’s wildlife management agency, considers the resurgence of black bears in Eastern Kentucky over the past 20 years to a “true wildlife success story” after they were essentially wiped out in the 1800s due to widespread logging of forests and colonization by settlers moving into the state.
Larry Cornett, the president of the Kentucky Bear Hunting Association, which represents hunters, including those who use dogs to chase and hunt bears, told the Lantern that black bears generally are afraid of people.
But the issue is what he calls “problem bears” that have formed a habit of getting into garbage as a food source.
“When a bear gets to where it’s not scared of humans, it’s a potential hazard,” Cornett said.
Cornett said he would be in favor of expanding black bear hunting opportunities in Kentucky to help control the population, something that the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commission could potentially look at in upcoming meetings.
Commission chair Chuck Meade told the Lantern the expansion of bear hunting was a “priority” of his and would be the “next topic of discussion” for a subcommittee of the commission. The issue has been on his radar since last year when he met with local elected officials in Eastern Kentucky.
He said some of the potential ideas to be considered could include adding a spring bear season, extending hunting season days and adding more youth hunting opportunities in “overpopulated areas.” About eight states have spring bear hunting seasons in the Western U.S., but none east of the Mississippi.
Earlier this year, the commission had already approved a smaller expansion of bear hunting by extending the days of the season when hunters can train dogs to chase bears, along with adding a short youth hunting season. But Meade doesn’t believe it has alleviated “any of the problems that some of the complainers are having about nuisance bears.”
Around that time, a Kentucky lobbyist with an animal welfare group had raised concerns about the stability of the state’s bear population because of the state’s “increasingly permissive” hunting regulations. The number of black bears killed in the state has sharply risen in recent years, with more than 200 bears killed in both 2024 and 2025. In 2015, hunters in Kentucky killed just 46 bears.
But for Meade, who represents Eastern Kentucky counties on the commission, he said there’s a “fine line of cohabitation” between bears and people. He said the commission would have to work with biologists within the department on potential solutions.
“If we’re overpopulated now and we don’t do anything, how much more overpopulated are we going to be next year?” Meade said.
Courtesy of Kentucky Lantern
