Huntsville is not the only north Alabama city dealing with bear sightings.<\/p>\n
Athens Police Chief Anthony Pressnell said Tuesday wildlife officials have notified his department that a bear has been spotted in different areas of the city limits.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe ask that you please do not agitate the bear, try to feed it, or try to take a selfie with it,\u201d Pressnell said. \u201cIf you see the bear, you can call us. We are staying in contact with Wildlife. Our hope is the bear will return to a more remote area.\u201d<\/p>\n
Residents spotting the bear are urged to call Athens police at 256-233-8700.<\/p>\n
The sightings come a week after a bear was caught on video by Cathy Hutchins as it was roaming through a yard in her Marina Park neighborhood of Huntsville.<\/p>\n
According to Outdoor Alabama, the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources website, the state\u2019s black bear population historically only occurred in the southwest portion of the state, primarily in Mobile, Washington and Clarke counties. It said bears of that part of the state are of the Florida subspecies, Ursus americanus floridanus, and while in low numbers here, are quite abundant throughout many areas of Florida.<\/p>\n
But recent years, black bears have steadily migrated into north Alabama from northwest Georgia, with the largest concentration in DeKalb, Cherokee and Etowah counties, and have established a small, but viable population in this region of the state.<\/p>\n
While these bears look similar to the Florida bear, they are classified as a different subspecies, the American Black Bear, Ursus americanus americanus. In addition to these core areas, sporadic bear sightings have been documented in other areas throughout the state, which may indicate that Alabama\u2019s black bear populations are slowly increasing, the state conservation site said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Huntsville is not the only north Alabama city dealing with bear sightings. Athens Police Chief Anthony Pressnell said…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[159,67,132,68,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-13152","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114743315448350958","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}