BODHI’s Wildlife Capture Specialists have over 20 years of experience working with black bears, having both treed and trapped several hundred bears in that time. Our well trained staff’s main priority is keeping the study animal and capture team safe, while also providing research projects with the highest levels of capture success. Please watch this video and see how we do it.

BODHI Wildlife Conservation Specialists capturing a black bear to collar for conservation research.  Capturing black bears is inherently dangerous and requires experts that are trained to safely handle these capture operations. 

Why Black Bears?

Black bears are a nomadic species found wandering vast and inaccessible tracts of forested habitats in search of food. They currently inhabit 28 of the lower 48 states, where they are listed as a big game species and sport hunting is utilized as a management tool to achieve a state’s population management objective. Due to the difficulty and expense of generating accurate population estimates on these far-ranging bears, wildlife agencies struggle to monitor the effects their prescribed harvest rates have on black bear population dynamics.

Black Bear Research

Studies over the past few decades and advances in tracking technology have enabled wildlife managers to gain a better understanding of black bear ecology. But in order to really protect this species we need more.  We live in a world heavily impacted by people, and like other big game species, black bears require close population monitoring so we can better understand the impact of development, hunting, and other human activities. Fine scale data allows wildlife managers to dynamically manage hunting quotas and keep them in line with how the populations fluctuate over time.

Promising new research projects are studying new techniques for generating consistent and cost effective population estimates. Unfortunately, funding for scientific research is shrinking and many of these projects wrestle to find enough funding to hire professional capture specialists necessary to ensure that black bears are captured safely and humanely.  Without critical data from these research projects, black bear populations are at risk of over harvest and population decline.

How You Can Help

This is where your donations can make the difference in successfully conserving black bears. We leverage your donation by combining it with research funding to get a bigger return on ever dollar donated. This important funding provides these research projects with access to professional carnivore capture specialists that are highly effective at safely and consistently capturing these bruins. Without your help, these important research projects would be under staffed, suffer from low capture success, and wouldn’t be able to collect sufficient data.  By helping scientists estimate black bear populations, you can help make sure wildlife biologists are using the best available information to sustainably manage black bears for generations to come.