The home range of a mature male bear will often overlap the home range of several female bears. Black bears prefer wooded cover and usually avoid open areas. They often use stream and creek beds as travel lanes because this avoids thick undergrowth and provides a barrier-free escape route. This is particularly true in areas where there is heavy urban build-up. Black bears are the most widely found and most numerous kind of bear in North America.
Black bears come into contact with more humans than almost any other species of bear.
This is the one bear species that seems able to survive in populated areas. Black bears in the wild can live twenty-five years or more. Most of them live only about five years because of hunting and human encroachment into their habitat. In Florida and other southern states, black bears don't hibernate. But most bears find or dig an earthen den in which to rest and bear their young.