Black bears of Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge

I’ve had a lot of interactions with black bears in my 39 years. And I consider myself lucky to have so many experiences, as black bears have been one of my favorite animals since I was a little kid.

My grandmother gave me a stuffed black bear when I was born, realistically shaped, and it has been the only toy from my childhood that has stayed with me over all the years and moves. But I did not grow up infantilizing or idolizing these animals. I grew up with a deep respect and awe for them.

In the summers, my parents would take me and my siblings backpacking and camping deep in the Adirondack wilderness for a week at a time. Some of my first memories are of watching black bears forage beside mountain lakes, pop their heads out from further up the trail. And there’s the time a massive male climbed a tree and spent an hour clawing at the rope we had used to tie all our food between two large trees. Its persistence paid off, as the bag eventually fell, and our backpack stashed with a week’s worth of food was consumed entirely.

But I’ve had many other interactions with a sow and cubs, or black bears just minding their own business in the mountains of Maine, on morning hikes in the Shenandoah mountains, in the buggy forests of north Florida. I’m a huge fan of these animals, and of fostering positive interactions and respect for them.

So, I was beyond excited to visit one of my bucket list wildlife refuges – Alligator River. This National Wildlife Refuge rests in the pocosin marsh of eastern North Carolina. A quick drive from the Outer Banks, it is home to the last remaining population of red wolves – a canid native to the Southeastern U.S. And it is also home to the largest concentration of coastal black bears in the Eastern U.S.

In August, I spent three mornings from pre-dawn to about 8 a.m. (when the heat became too much for me) searching for bears. I had 17 encounters in three mornings with at least 10 different individual black bears. Some were fleeting, a large boar crossing the path, or cooling off in the marsh waters. I saw a few cubs sprinting in or out of the tall grass. A few sniffed me out and moseyed on into the dense, thick pocosin woods. It becomes impossible to see into the thicket more than ten feet. And then there were a few bears who knew I was there, and did not care, and just went about their daily business.

These pictures are of those bears, two young boars. Ethics in wildlife photography is of the utmost importance to me, and I have never photographed bears before. So, I felt it very important to focus on the ethics of this particular place, and these particular animals. I would not attempt any pictures of animals unless the fell into the category of going about their business without concern for me. I also kept a safe and ethical distance, and was using 540-800mm equivalent, so I was always a safe and respectful distance.

I felt grateful these bears allowed me to spend time with them (20 and 30 minutes respectively). And while the intense heat and humidity made photography and just being out there difficult, it gave me a renewed sense of respect for black bears, and how enduring, smart, and resourceful they are.

I look forward to continuing to see black bears thrive across the U.S., as they’ve always been my rare but welcomed neighbors.

My favorite shot of a scarred-up, tick-bitten, relaxed male