It lives in the coastal areas of British Columbia. The blue bear, also called the glacier bear, has gray hairs mixed with the black ones, giving the animal a bluish color. The blue bear lives in the mountains of the St. Elias Range in southeastern Alaska. These bears become troublesome around camps and cabins if food is left in their reach. Black bears have severely injured and sometimes have even killed campers or travelers who feed them.
Black bears live in many large wooded areas of North America.
There are about 75,000 of them in the national forests of the United States. Many states allow people to hunt these bears, and hunters kill about 25,000 a year. Asiatic black bears, sometimes called Himalayan bears, are smaller than American black bears. Most Asiatic black bears are black, with some white hairs on the chin and a large white crescent-shaped mark on the chest. They are often called moon bears because of this mark.