The road outside Arlington National Cemetery wasn't the place Jeff Yutzler would ever expect to see a black bear. But then one bounded out of the trees ahead of him and his daughter as they biked through the area on a hot June day.

"It was off the bridge and disappeared into woods and out of sight," he recalled.

Hours later, Yutzler said, the bear was dead.

Yutzler saw the news on social media – the body of a black bear was recovered off the side of a highway near the Pentagon, around a mile from where he spotted it. "It was the excitement of seeing this thing, and then, six hours later, finding out it was killed on 395," he said.

Yutzler's brush with the bear comes amid an increase in human-black bear incidents in multiple states as bears wander into populated areas in search of food and new territory. But experts say, without greater public awareness, encounters can endanger both people and bears.

In the first seven years of her tenure at the Animal Welfare League of Arlington, Chief of Animal Control Jennifer Toussaint said she would receive reports of only around one bear in the area every three or four years. In the past six years, that number grew to three to four bears making their way through a "good portion" of Arlington County every year, she said.

Bear complaints in Virginia more than doubled from 2021 to 2023, jumping from 900 to more than 2,100, according to a wildlife conflict helpline managed by the state's Department of Wildlife Resources and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The trend extends far beyond Arlington.

State wildlife agencies logged more than 46,000 recorded human-black bear interactions in 2022, with at least 18 states reporting an increase, according to a survey of data conducted by the International Association for Bear Research and Management. Some states are seeing black bears within their borders for the first time – in Illinois, the first black bear sighting in the state in four years was reported on last week.

At the same time, the nation's black bear population, of around 470,000, is growing in at least 24 states, according to the survey, as black bears in more than half of U.S. states are expanding their range.

But the growing frequency of interactions could have as much to do with people as bears, said Joe Clark, a research ecologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center.

"There are more bears than there have been before. And secondly, there are more humans living in bear range than ever before," he said.

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David Telesco, co-chair of the International Association for Bear Research and Management's management committee, echoed that a large human population also drives human-bear interactions.

In Telesco's state of Florida, a sharp increase in bear encounters spurred legislative action. A self-defense law reducing penalties for killing bears went into effect in Florida on July 1 after the state reported 14,000 animal nuisance calls in 2022, a 33% increase which included nearly 6,000 bear-related calls, the Tallahassee Democrat, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported.

"You have certain areas that have a growing bear population, and there are just not that many people," said Telesco, also the assistant section leader for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's imperiled species management section. "But you have other areas that have a handful of bears but a lot of people, and the interactions are very high."

"It only takes one bear to walk through a neighborhood to get 20 calls," he added.

Telesco also cited the rise of Ring doorbell cameras and other home security cameras as a possible factor.

"They'll report to us, 'Hey, I saw a bear,' and when we say, 'When?' They say, 'Oh, 2 a.m.,'" Telesco said. "That bear likely has been around your property at 2 a.m. well before you had the camera."

Bear population boom spurred by changing public attitudes

Last month, Eric Webber Sr. peeked out the window to see multiple police cars parked outside and his dog barking wildly. Minutes later, he was staring up at a black bear that his dog chased up a tree outside his Waycross, Georgia, home.

"He seemed like he was more curious than anything," Webber said. "It wasn't really that big... but it seemed like he was tired and hot and hungry."

After Webber and his neighbors waited for more than an hour, the bear came down of its own accord. "I know there's a lot of kids and people around in that area, so we just didn't want nobody to get hurt," Webber said.

Bears can roam hundreds of miles over their lifetimes – in Florida, for instance, an adult male bear's annual range spans anywhere from 30 to 130 square miles, according to Telesco.

And bears themselves aren't fazed by passing through a crowded area, he said. "They're very adaptable. They don't mind."

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But the amount that they travel depends on their habitat's quality, and if they can find enough food and mates in a given area.

In the summer, bears, also meat eaters, feed on mostly vegetation and grasses, which don't provide as much caloric density as their winter diet of berries or nuts, forcing them to also spend more time searching for food, said Jonathan Russell, a wildlife biologist with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Russell said this time of year – June and July – is also breeding season for bears, triggering young males to venture outside of familiar areas, unlike young female bears that typically establish their home near where their mother ranges. "As they travel, they might end up in some pretty surprising spots, including suburban and urban areas," he said.

Telesco said, "They will travel very, very far. But once they're a full, mature adult, they'll pick a spot and they'll roam that area."

While black bear populations in the West have remained "robust," Clark said, the number of black bears in eastern states plummeted until the early 20th century. European settlers considered them a threat to crops and livestock and sold their fat, meat, and skins as commodities.

But as public attitudes changed and the government implemented wildlife conservation regulations, black bears began to multiply.

"Because of the creation of public lands and better stewardship of the private land that we have, those populations have kind of recovered," Clark said.

Russell said wildland conservation efforts allowed black bears to expand into areas they occupied earlier, "but haven't been for quite some time."

"A lot of areas are reverting back into forests," he added.

Bear officials are also putting effort into keeping open corridors for bears to cross from one forest area to another, according to Telesco.

More:Video shows people feeding bears from balcony of Smoky Mountain lodge, violating law

Exposure to human food endangers bears and people

Just two weeks before Yutzler's sighting, Sonia Nayar, 52, found the body of a black bear in a bag while on a walk with her dog in her Arlington neighborhood across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.

"My dog went close to the bag... and there were a lot of flies," Nayar told USA TODAY. "I saw part of the head of a bear and the ear of the bear sticking out."

Nayar posted about the incident on the social media app Nextdoor, where the post eventually racked up around 17,000 views, she said. She took the advice of other posters and called the local police non-emergency number.

The Animal Welfare League later determined that the bear Nayar found was struck by a car and illegally dumped by a contracting company called to remove the body.

Nayar was saddened to see the animal that way. "I've lived in Arlington for over 10 years," she said. "I've never seen a bear."

Across the country, some black bear encounters have led to injuries and deaths.

Earlier this month, a black bear collided with a runner in Yosemite National Park, leaving the man with minor injuries. And late last month, a bear was euthanized after it broke into a concession stand at a Tennessee amusement park and took a swipe at a park employee. In May, another bear was put down in Arizona after it broke into a cabin and attacked a 15-year-old boy as he watched TV.

Back in Arlington this summer, animal control officers interceded when bystanders chased after a bear to take photos, Toussaint said. But during a more recent encounter, after a bear took an unexpected turn and veered deep into a community, people started to offer it food.

"I start getting videos and pictures of people giving him chicken and fruit and goldfish," Toussaint said. "That is absolutely not the behavior that needs to occur."

Russell said food sources are the "biggest concern" when bears live in close proximity to people, and that bears could build "an association between people and food."

"The more we can avoid building that association... the better for bears and people," he said.

Access to human food sources or garbage can cause dangerous situations down the line, Telesco said. "They're starting to lose that fear, and so someone might be able to approach them, get too close, and then they'll spook, and someone can get hurt."

Russell said people in bear-prone areas should make sure to secure any possible food sources, including trash lying around, birdfeeders, or outdoor pets.

More:Video shows bear walk up to front door of Florida home: Watch

Wildlife agencies avoid relocating bears

Some residents, including Nayar, wish local wildlife officials would take a more active role in relocating wandering bears.

But Telesco said relocating bears doesn't address the root cause, usually unsecured food. Chances are also slim that the bear will stay put after it's moved, he said.

"Bears are there because they live there," he said. "The idea of, can you please move this bear to some wide open space where there's no people, is hard to do."

Clark said if bears don't encounter open food and aren't bothered on their quest for greener pastures, they are unlikely to cause a disturbance or danger.

"People used to think that black bears needed wilderness to survive... and that's just not true anymore," he said. "They do quite well around the humans. It's the humans that don't do well around bears oftentimes."

• In Florida, a sheriff's office asked residents to stop trying to take selfies with a "depressed bear" that was sitting on the side of the road.
• California reported a 160% increase in human-black bear conflicts in 2021 and 2022, according to a conservation plan released in April by the state's Department of Fish and Wildlife.
• Reports of bears showing undesirable behaviors around humans in New York state grew steadily from 2008, breaking 200 in 2022, according to data shared by the state's Department of Environmental Conservation.
• New Jersey saw black bear incidents increase 6.8% this year through June 21, according to the state's Department of Environmental Protection.
• The Michigan Department of Natural Resources received more than 100 annual "nuisance complaints" of black bears for the past decade – for the nine years before, annual complaints never climbed above 100, according to a department presentation from 2023.
• Human-bear conflicts in Vermont steadily climbed from less than 300 in 2010 to more than 700 in 2016 and 2018, according to a 2020 big game management plan released by the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department. Officials told VTDigger there were 1,700 reports in 2020 and 1,400 reports in 2022.

Cybele Mayes-Osterman is a breaking news reporter for USA Today. Reach her on email at [email protected]. Follow her on X @CybeleMO.