About Us

For thousands of years in the Northern Hemisphere, humans and bears have lived together in relative peace. The peoples of North Bay were also part of this bear-human relationship. Yet through extirpation of grizzlies, humans have forgotten how to be with bears. To revive a dying bear culture, the North Bay Bear Collaborative (NBBC) has come together to help both our human and bear communities stay safe and resilient.

The North Bay Bear Collaborative is a working group of agencies, non-profit conservation groups, landowners and individuals committed being proactive liaisons between humans and bears. Our aim is to mitigate future challenges that may arise from our increasing black bear population.

Our Mission & Approach

Our mission includes public messaging and outreach to teach people how to live among bears safely, including guidance on avoiding the kind of attractive nuisances likely to lure wild animals into neighborhoods. In addition, we will teach people to be better stewards of our open spaces. Black bears are emblematic of wildness, needing a mosaic of diverse habitats to survive. By building resilient and biodiverse habitats, we help bears to stay wild, in our open spaces, and out of our neighborhoods. To ensure longevity and increase awareness, we will be offering teen internships in wildlife conservation, monitoring, and historical ecology.

NBBC is also improving the infrastructure of our regional and state parks. We will be installing bear proof trash cans and food storage containers in camp grounds and back country sites.

Beyond outreach and infrastructure, we are collecting data to map the range of North Bay black bears. This will help us to better understand their dispersal patterns. We hope in the future to begin a DNA study to determine how individual bears are genetically related to one another.