UCLA's famed campus Bruin statue doesn't have it all that different from his living, breathing cousins some 30 miles away in the San Gabriel Mountain communities. When encountered on Bruin Walk, people will instinctively whip out their phones to snap a picture of the imposing bronze bear, teeth bared and trapezius muscle flexed. In the not-so-distant future, however, this Bruin might not be the only bear in the area -- though hopefully he'll remain the only one prompting bear selfies with prospective students on campus tours.
As black bear-human encounters continue to make headlines across Southern California -- including a recent uptick in sightings during drought conditions -- UCLA researcher Wilson Sherman is working to understand what this shift means for communities and how they can prepare.
"Given recent events demonstrating their ability to traverse large distances and quickly adapt to new parts of Los Angeles, it's not impossible to imagine black bears showing up in the neighborhoods near campus in the next decade," said Sherman, a doctoral student at UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, or IOES. "That's our new reality in Southern California."
Sherman studies, among other things, the growing overlap between black bears and people -- an intersection of increasing community concern in Southern California's foothill suburbs. This fall, as the season pushes bears into hyperphagia, a period of near-constant eating to prepare for winter, neighborhood trash cans and compost piles become irresistible food sources.
"Why lift up rocks in the forest to find a few worms when they can get a whole pizza out of someone's garbage bin?" Sherman said. "They're smart, and they quickly learn that neighborhoods can be a valuable source of calorie-dense food."
Black bears in Southern California
Though mountain lions are often thought of as the apex wild mammal in the region, black bears have made steady inroads into Southern California's suburban and urban spaces over the last century -- or rather, we've expanded these spaces into theirs. The timeline of black bears' residency in the Southland, however, isn't so linear.
Fossil records show black bears lived in Southern California thousands of years ago, but by the late 1700s, when the region was under Spanish rule but remained home to the Tongva people, grizzlies dominated the landscape.
Eventually, grizzlies disappeared from Southern California, driven away by settlers and hunting, with the last killed by a farmer protecting his family and crops in 1916. It wasn't until the 1930s that bears would again roam the Southland.
The unusual reintroduction of black bears to Southern California was inspired by Yosemite's big draw at the time: trash-fed bears in the round. Arenas filled with garbage would attract bears that would come to eat, all while entertaining park-goers who could safely watch from bleachers on the other side of a fence.
In 1933, about 30 black bears were brought to Southern California for recreational purposes. Eventually, though, these wild animals were spared from garbage arenas and left to their own devices in the Southern California mountain ranges. Since then, a thriving local population of black bears has contributed to California's overall population of the species, last estimated at 60,000, according to Sherman.
As human-bear conflict increases, however, the resources of government agencies tasked with wildlife management are stretched thin. Sherman said residents of Southern California, and especially Los Angeles, generally engage with wildlife in observational and protective ways, which in other parts of the nation isn't always the case. "Historically, our wildlife management agencies have been structured around supporting hunters, and though the agency now focuses on conservation and mitigation of conflict as well, the vestiges of these roots remain in the agency."
That mismatch has left agencies chronically underfunded and understaffed. "Fish and Wildlife has only two biologists focused on responding to carnivore incidents for Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties," he said. "They're in a tough spot -- unprepared to respond to the level of wildlife interactions we're seeing in the ways communities and local governments expect them to."
Rethinking coexistence
One cultural phenomenon running parallel to the rise of black bear encounters is the evolution of the internet -- and more specifically, the rise of social media platforms, where wildlife content remains popular. With this in mind, one branch of Sherman's research has taken a novel approach: instead of tracking bears only on the landscape, he studies where they appear online. The work is published in the journal Science of The Total Environment.
Platforms like Nextdoor are filled with grainy doorbell‑camera clips of bears ambling through neighborhoods, often at night, their eyes lit up by the night vision. Other posts often feature videos of bears cooling off in pools as residents giddily film from inside their homes. For every post with bear content, the comment threads reliably explode -- with everything from heart‑emojis to fraught neighborhood debates about curbing encounters or securing trash receptacles.
"In the neighborhoods I studied, there are 11 times more reports of bear and coyote sightings on Nextdoor than on iNaturalist, the community science platform often utilized by ecologists interested in urban wildlife presence," Sherman said. "That tells us something about where certain communities are actually reporting and sharing information."
By analyzing these conversations, Sherman hopes to understand how internet discourse shapes engagement with wildlife and perspectives on wildlife management to improve coexistence.
Sherman also stresses that fascination with bears can be just as dangerous as fear. "People who are loving the bears a little too much are also part of the problem," he said. Animals experienced in interactions with humans often end up in conflict with them, and once that happens, outcomes can turn fatal.
"It would help if the fluffy news features about bears on TV also carried a simple PSA," he said. "Something like: "Reduce attractants and also set healthy boundaries with bears through hazing efforts.'"
In practice, these efforts can encompass everything from incorporating bear-lock trash cans in mountain communities, keeping doors and windows secured, using air horns or other loud noises to discourage a bear lingering near a home, or even urging residents to install electric doormats ("unwelcome mats") if bears take too much of a liking to a property.
A rapidly expanding range
All of these prevention strategies can help keep bears and people safely apart -- but they're only one part of the equation. Even as communities reduce attractants and set firmer boundaries, bears continue to move into new areas, often far beyond the places they historically occupied.
For instance, the construction of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing -- soon to be the largest corridor of its kind in the world -- will expand connectivity between wild spaces, increasing the likelihood of more bears entering the Santa Monica Mountains, says Sherman.
This, of course, is happening even without the crossing being officially open for business. Just take BB14, an up-and-coming Southern California bear celebrity who was relocated from Claremont to the Los Angeles forest before making her way to Topanga Canyon, where she welcomed three cubs in the spring. The 175-pound female has even popped up on the Pepperdine University campus.
"That's a set of communities that, at this point, are totally unprepared for that," said Sherman. "Connectivity is only the first step. We also need to be equipping communities, waste management companies, local governments and state wildlife agencies with the resources and information they need to foster coexistence."
For Sherman, who is a National Science Foundation research fellow, this calling reflects his own desired career trajectory.
"What's cool about working in urban ecology is the opportunity to reconceptualize landscapes one might not consider traditional wildlife habitat, like cities and suburbs," Sherman said.
He emphasized that although wildlife requires continuous habitat, cities already function as part of that landscape. Coexistence, he explained, depends on making urban spaces more compatible with wildlife and ensuring that communities along the urban-wildlife interface have the support, information and tools needed to set safe, effective boundaries.
Sherman notes that this interdisciplinary approach to research is exactly what UCLA is uniquely positioned to support.
"I wouldn't be equipped to study interactions between humans and wildlife in this region using training from a traditional Ph.D. program focused on a single discipline, like ecology. The interdisciplinary training I am receiving in IOES allows me to approach the subject using tools from the social and natural sciences."
As black bears venture farther into Southern California, Sherman hopes local communities -- including UCLA Bruins -- will be ready. Coexistence, he believes, begins with understanding the animals that now share our space.