About this site
East Tennessee Bear Spotting is a community log of black bear sightings across the region — a simple way for neighbors, hikers, and plant and utility crews to share where bears are showing up.
4
sightings logged to date
4
reported in the last 30 days
3
contributors
How it works
- Create a free account. An email and password is all it takes, so reports can be credited and corrected later.
- Report from where you saw the bear — once you are somewhere safe. On a phone, the report form asks your browser for GPS coordinates and records roughly where you are standing, along with how accurate that fix was.
- Add the details. Date and time, how many bears, whether it was a single adult or a sow with cubs, a short description, and an optional photo.
- Watch the map. Every published report appears on the sightings map with a pin and popup, filterable by the last week, month, quarter, or year.
No GPS available, or reporting from a desktop later? Type the latitude and longitude in by hand — the form accepts either.
Bear safety
Black bears are common throughout East Tennessee, and most encounters end with the bear leaving on its own. A few basics:
- Keep at least 50 yards away. Never approach for a closer photo.
- Never feed a bear. A bear that learns to associate people with food usually ends up dead.
- Secure trash, grills, pet food, and bird feeders — food smells are what bring bears into neighborhoods.
- If a bear approaches, do not run. Make yourself look large, make noise, and back away slowly.
- Carry bear spray on backcountry trails and know how to use it before you need it.
This site is not an emergency service. Report aggressive, injured, or nuisance bears to the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, or call 911 if someone is in immediate danger. For sightings inside the national park, contact Great Smoky Mountains National Park directly.
Accuracy and moderation
Reports are submitted by the public and are not verified by a wildlife professional. Coordinates come from consumer phone GPS, so a pin can be off by anywhere from a few yards to a few hundred — where the device reported poor accuracy, the map draws a shaded circle instead of implying a precise spot.
Site administrators review reports and hide anything that looks mistaken, duplicated, or inappropriate. Hidden reports drop off the map and the public list. If something you posted needs correcting or removing, get in touch and we will take care of it.
Your privacy
- We store your name or handle, your email address, and a securely hashed password — never the password itself.
- Location is recorded only for the sighting you submit, at the moment you submit it. The site does not track you in the background.
- The public list and map show the display name you chose, not your email address.
- Do not report a sighting from inside a residence in a way that identifies someone else's address, and do not post photos of other people without their consent.
Credits
Maps are rendered with Leaflet over OpenStreetMap data, © OpenStreetMap contributors. The site itself runs on PHP and MySQL and is built and maintained locally in East Tennessee.
Ready to add one?
If you have seen a bear recently, it takes about 30 seconds to log it.