“ The biggest threat to [bears’] survival is loss of land. They need room to thrive; males need 50 to 120 square miles for a home range, while females need between 11 and 25 square miles.”—Casey Darling Kniffin With its thick, dark pelage, it is hard to imagine the cumbrous and burly bear would find a swampy peninsula within a subtropical climate an acceptable place to settle. Before Florida was inhabited by humans, it was home to a subspecies of the American black bear. North America’s smallest bear species, the Florida black bear (Ursus americanus floridanus), found both food and shelter in the state’s dense habitats of hardwood and palm forests, flatwoods, bogs, and scrub oak ridges.
Although not territorial, bears require space to survive. Florida’s largest terrestrial mammal will…
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Naples Illustrated (Digital) - 1 Issue, March 2025