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Bonnie McKinney [00:00:02] And this is incredible, we're learning about black bears in Texas, particularly west Texas, from the ground up.

Bonnie McKinney [00:00:08] I think it's very important because we they've been gone so long. And then to come back in, I mean, a species very, very seldom performs a natural recovery on their own. Some wolves, I think, up in Minnesota maybe that are the only examples that I can think of or up in the north country; it may not even be Minnesota.

Bonnie McKinney [00:00:28] But natural recovery very seldom occurs without the intervention of man and reintroduction or relocation efforts. And the bears came back on their own and they've just sort of come in very quietly without a lot of fanfare. And they're doing very well. And a lot of this was just I mean, information that we're obtaining.

Bonnie McKinney [00:00:47] You know, when I have a call from a, like I had a particular rancher call me and he said there's a there's two bears on my ranch. And he said, "I want 'em gone." I said, "Well, what are they bothering?" "Well, nothing." And I said, "Well, let's, can we just leave them and let's see what happens?"

Bonnie McKinney [00:01:02] And we got to talking about the animal itself. Well, you'd think that he owns every one of the bears now. They're his bears. He's very protective of them. And a lot of it is just education. You know, when we're learning through the research that we're doing on Black Gap, therefore we can pass this knowledge on to the landowner with some good management suggestions and sound biological data to back that up.

Bonnie McKinney [00:01:28] We've, we've had very little predation and we may have been very, very lucky because bears are predators. But the diet, and the black bear diet is normally vegetation. More than three fourths of percent of the diet is.

Bonnie McKinney [00:01:43] Your grizzly - a lot of grizzly bear facts get attached to the black bear. And the grizzly is a pretty much a strict meat eater. A lot a lot more problems with livestock in grizzly country than the black bear.