{"id":403138,"date":"2019-04-15T07:49:21","date_gmt":"2019-04-15T06:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/to-survive-in-texas-black-bears-need-an-open-border\/"},"modified":"2019-04-15T07:49:21","modified_gmt":"2019-04-15T06:49:21","slug":"to-survive-in-texas-black-bears-need-an-open-border","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/to-survive-in-texas-black-bears-need-an-open-border\/","title":{"rendered":"To Survive in Texas, Black Bears Need an Open Border"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As a child Diana Doan-Crider loved hearing her grandfather\u2019s tales of the grizzly bears and wolves he saw in the early 1900s while working to build Mexico\u2019s railroads through the mountains. A Tepehu\u00e1n Indian from Durango Mexico, he told vivid stories, and his knowledge of nature inspired her to become a wildlife biologist when she grew up and to spend decades researching black bears in northern Coahuila\u2019s mountains, just across the Texas border.<\/p>\n

That was an important time for black bears, which had all but vanished from Texas in the 1950s following decades of hunting, trapping and habitat loss. The animals started to return to Texas\u2019s Big Bend National Park in the late 1980s. At first it was just a handful of bears, but soon visitors began reporting dozens sighted a year, including females with cubs.<\/p>\n

Doan-Crider\u2019s <\/span>pioneering research<\/a>, published in 1996, helped confirm what Texas wildlife managers long suspected: Black bears were regaining a foothold in southern Texas, not from other U.S. states but from Mexico.<\/p>\n

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