Formosan Black Bear

The white V on the chest, evolving from a mere identification mark into a complex coexistence problem.

30-Second Overview

30-Second Overview: From 2011 to 2025, the Forestry and Natural Resources Agency (林業及自然保育署) compiled a total of 2,034 Formosan black bear sightings across Taiwan, ranging from direct observations and automatic camera captures to intrusion reports and rescue incidents. Before 2018, records were distributed across 17 townships in 11 counties; this expanded to 27 townships in 11 counties after 2018.¹

In March 2026, the Forestry and Natural Resources Agency provided an initial estimate of approximately 1,200 black bears nationwide based on recent monitoring data, but this remains a preliminary projection. A more precise version will only be available at the end of the year after accumulating more local density data from different regions and altitudes.²

The Formosan black bear is an endemic subspecies of the Asiatic Black Bear and Taiwan's only native bear species. It primarily inhabits forests in the Central Mountain Range between 1,000 and 2,500 meters, does not hibernate, and its annual range can span from 27 to 202 square kilometers.^{3 4}

Clarifying the Numbers: Three Different "Bear Counts"

The figures related to the Formosan black bear are often presented together, yet readers fail to realize they answer different questions. The count of 200 to 600 refers to older estimates used by the Yushan National Park and its digital archives. The figure of 1,200 is the preliminary estimate from March 2026 based on recent monitoring data. The 2,034 represents discovery records from 2011 to 2025, which does not equate to 2,034 individual bears.^{1 3 2 4}

📝 Curator's Note
What is most needed in black bear conservation is knowing how each number was derived and what question it answers, rather than pursuing a single, seemingly precise figure. By honestly retaining uncertainty—even when the 1,200 estimate may still be revised up or down—the preliminary assessment can truly serve science.

The White V, Hiding a Bear That Doesn't Live in a Den

The Formosan black bear (Ursus thibetanus formosanus) is unmistakable in Taiwan thanks to its black fur, round ears, short tail, and the yellowish-white V-shape or crescent marking on its chest. Adults weigh roughly 60 to 150 kilograms and measure about 130 to 180 centimeters in length.³

It doesn't live only in the vaguely defined "mountain interior." Official records show it occurring from elevations of 300 meters up to 3,700 meters, with its main distribution still concentrated in the 1,000-to-2,500-meter forests of the Central Mountain Range. This means the Formosan black bear needs connected mountain forests so it can move, forage, and breed—single protected areas' boundaries are far from sufficient.³

The Formosan black bear does not hibernate and may be active year-round. It has no fixed den, is primarily diurnal, and activity increases in summer and autumn. In autumn and winter, when fruits of the Fagaceae family ripen, nocturnal activity may increase as well. Radio-tracking studies in Yushan National Park estimate an individual's annual activity range at roughly 27 to 202 square kilometers.^{3 4}

Only a Few Cubs Born Each Year

The Formosan black bear's breeding season runs from about June to August. After mating, the embryo undergoes delayed implantation, and females typically give birth from December to February of the following year, usually to one to three cubs. Cubs stay with their mother until the next breeding season before gradually leaving.³

Because females have a fixed breeding season, cubs must learn to forage, recognize danger, and navigate the forest while staying by their mother's side—population recovery takes time. When research data show increasing records, researchers simultaneously examine breeding age, cub survival, and individual identification across generations to determine whether the increase reflects greater observation opportunities or a population capable of sustaining itself.^{3 2}

This photo is an artificial-environment image of a Formosan black bear, provided as a visual reference for body shape, claws, and chest marking—not as evidence of Taiwan's wild distribution. Photo: Smartneddy, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. Image archived in the project.

This illustration is meant to suggest the Formosan black bear's body shape and chest marking, not a wild individual. Illustration: SilverSea Design / Chofy Lin, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. Image archived in the project.

What They Eat Determines Where They Go

Formosan black bears are omnivores, but plants constitute the majority of their diet. In spring, they eat tender leaves, roots, and other green vegetation; in summer, they often utilize soft fruits and insects; and in autumn/winter, they move according to the acorn harvest. Educational materials from Yushan National Park also note that they consume honey, ant nests, carrion, and ungulates.^{3 4}

A study conducted between 1998 and 2000 cross-observed the diet of Formosan black bears through scat analysis, foraging traces, and interviews with Indigenous hunters. Researchers found 654 autumn and early winter scats; during this period, bears concentrated in areas rich in oaks, primarily consuming acorns. In 1999, when the acorn harvest was poor, records of them eating ungulates increased. Fewer scats were found in summer because the bears dispersed over a larger area to forage.⁵

This diet means that "where the bear lives" cannot be answered by altitude alone. Food changes, and so do the bears' routes. The annual cycle of fruits in the forest, roads, and human activities all change the cost of their movement in the mountains. Protecting a patch of forest is important, but ensuring connectivity between different habitats is equally vital.

Researchers Must Learn to Wait in the Mountains

In 1996, the Yushan National Park management office established a black bear project conservation team to build field data with scholars. Early research required capturing and collaring bears in the Central Mountain Range for radio tracking. The researchers did not bring the bears back to a laboratory; they walked into the bears' time, waiting for signals to return from the other side of the steep slopes.⁴

Research conducted in the Yushan Great Divide area between 1998 and 2001 captured and collared 15 black bears, 8 of which had broken toes or paws. This proportion is a population issue that must be studied, recorded, and addressed by policy. Photos show injuries, while data explains how traps leave their mark.⁴

Huang Mei-hsiu later became an important driver in the long-term research and conservation of the Formosan black bear. She and her team integrated individual identification, radio tracking, genetic analysis of scat samples, automatic cameras, and community cooperation into one conservation map. The research moved beyond simply answering "how many bears are there" to also asking "why did they disappear here," "where needs to be connected," and "what humans must change."^{4 6}

Injuries Left by Traps Change How They Walk

Trapping and illegal hunting have long been considered major anthropogenic threats to the Formosan black bear. Injury does not end when a bear escapes a trap. A 2024 study focusing on 15 bears in Yushan National Park compared 6 injured individuals with 9 healthy ones, finding no statistical difference in dispersal rate or home range, but differences in habitat selection. Healthy bears preferred rugged terrain and greener vegetation; the injured individuals did not show the same preference and more strongly avoided areas near roads and human activity.⁷

This result corrects an intuition: injured bears are not necessarily just "moving less" in the mountains. They may change their habitat choice, or they may pay a greater cost in long-term foraging and evading humans due to the energy burden of injury. Conservation cannot start only after finding one bear in a trap; it must ensure that the next one does not have to follow the same path.

Roads and development also slice forests into isolated blocks. For animals with annual ranges spanning tens of square kilometers, a road is just a line on a map, but for a black bear, it can be the cost of rerouting after its foraging path has been cut off. Recent official monitoring shows that bear records are approaching lower mountains and plains, making habitat connectivity and human food management more urgent.^{1 8}

📝 Curator's Note
A bear with a broken paw makes us see the wound first; research reminds us to look further ahead: what truly needs repair is its body and the environment that caused it to be injured, move, and forage.

Nan'an Cubs: Going Home Isn't Just Opening a Cage Door

In 2018, a cub separated from its mother was found near Nan'an Waterfall in Hualien. It was subsequently nicknamed "Mei-zai" (little sister) and sent to the low-altitude experimental station of the endemic species research center for over nine months of care and rewilding training. Training included learning to identify natural food, forage, hunt, and avoid human food and steel traps.⁹

For a cub, release is not sending it back to an abstract "nature." It must relearn which scents are worth approaching and which sounds require leaving, all without its mother's guidance. This is why the story of the Nan'an cubs is important: it shows the details of conservation work—from food and behavior to monitoring after reintroduction—where every step prioritizes the animal's ability to live independently.⁹

This is a freely licensed photo from Wikimedia Commons labeled "Formosan black bear suckling cubs," provided as a reference for cub morphology, not to prove the identity or location of the Nan'an cubs. Image: Abu0804, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The image has been archived in the project.

Three National Parks Are Not Enough to Be an Island

The three high-mountain national parks—Yushan, Taroko, and Xueba—span the core area of the Central Mountain Range and are critical habitats for the Formosan black bear. In recent years, park management and the Forestry and Natural Resources Agency have integrated infrared automatic cameras, genetic analysis of scat samples, habitat corridors, and community cooperation into a single conservation effort, aiming to allow bears to move between different protected areas.^{4 8}

This concept of "corridors" changes the role of protected areas. The role is not to keep bears within boundaries, but to connect protected areas, forest roads, villages, farmlands, and low mountains to reduce risks during transit. Data from 2011 to 2025 released by the Forestry and Natural Resources Agency shows an increase in bear records across mid-to-high altitudes and below 1,200 meters; some areas are starting to approach lower mountains and plains.¹

Lin Hua-ching, Director of the Forestry and Natural Resources Agency, stated: "Coexistence between humans and bears will be the primary goal of future conservation policy."⁸ The emphasis here is not on the slogan but on the shift in focus. What now needs to be managed is not just the bear's habitat, but also human food sources such as kitchen waste from mountain huts, orchards, apiaries, poultry farms, hunting gear, and roadsides.

This photo is from an exhibition record at the Nan'an Visitor Center, provided as a visual reference for how bear distribution and conservation information are presented, and not as independent wild distribution evidence. Image: Toadboat, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The image has been archived in the project.

The official video from the Yushan National Park Management Office, "Yushan Bear Rearing," focuses on forest habitat and conservation research to explain why bears need continuous forests.

When Encountering Bears, Put Away Human Bait First

The official promotional video from the Yushan National Park Management Office, Encounter a Formosan Black Bear, condenses the black bear's ecology, habits, distribution, and encounter-response guidance into a short film suitable for viewing before hiking. Read alongside written instructions, it turns the abstract principle of "maintaining distance" into concrete preparation before entering the mountains.¹⁰

Official promotional video from the Yushan National Park Management Office: discussing how to reduce unnecessary human-bear encounters before entering the mountains, based on black bear habits and distribution.

Yushan National Park's official guidance reminds visitors that Formosan black bears are typically alert and secretive, and usually leave once they detect human presence. For hikers, the most practical preparation is securing one's food and not letting it become a reason for bears to approach humans. When leaving the mountain area, all garbage, kitchen waste, and food must be packed out.¹¹

If one does encounter a black bear, the park recommends staying calm, moving quietly and leaving the area as quickly as possible; do not chase, feed, or attempt to approach for photos — these are the common baseline of every bear encounter guide. When hiking, one can carry bear bells or whistles to make noise, travel in groups, and report sightings of bears or bear signs to the management unit as soon as possible. Yushan National Park's original text is direct: "If you see a black bear, please stay calm, leave quietly and quickly."¹¹

These practices keep the forest open and leave encounters at a brief, withdrawable distance. Yushan National Park Commission Director Wang Chen-mi states that conservation goals have clearly shifted toward "prevention and management in equal measure."⁸ Managing human food sources is usually more effective and earlier than trying to change bears' habits of rummaging through backpacks.

Black Bears Cannot Be Just Cute Patterns

The Formosan black bear has entered national park exhibitions, educational materials, and public visuals. The V on its chest is easily drawn into cute characters, but the real black bear is a wild animal that requires large areas of forest, seasonal food, and quiet distance. Images can help people recognize them initially, but they cannot substitute for data on habitat, population, or human-bear relationships.^{4 6}

This photo was taken at Shoushan Zoo and shows the Formosan black bear in a captive setting. Image: Tvpuppy, used under the Open Information Announcement of the Shoushan Zoo Government Website, attribution required. It is not evidence of wild behavior, population size, or habitat distribution. The image has been archived in the project.

Conservation also requires collaboration among researchers, government agencies, and local communities. The action guidelines of the Formosan Black Bear Conservation Association place human-bear interaction, illegal trade, habitat management, research information, educational communication, capacity building, and legislative policy into one framework. This arrangement shows that the future of the black bear is linked to forest governance and how local life operates together.⁶

When bears approach villages or farmlands, the response cannot stop at relocating the animal. Food and kitchen waste must be managed; poultry farms and apiaries must be reinforced with enclosures; reporting and rescue operations must be connected; and observations and traditional knowledge from the community must be treated as part of conservation data. The recent direction from official bodies is to place local communities on the front lines of black bear conservation, not just notifying them after a conflict has occurred.^{1 8}

Three Lines at the Conservation Site

The action guidelines for Formosan black bear conservation integrate human-bear interaction, habitat management, research information, educational communication, and policy regulations. When applied on the ground, this can be organized into three interconnected lines: first, reducing direct harm; second, maintaining connected forests where bears can move; and finally, enabling local communities to manage encounters.⁶

These three lines cannot be treated as three unrelated projects. Without community reports, researchers may learn too late that bears are nearby. Without habitat connectivity, even if an injured individual is rescued, it may have to move in a narrower space closer to humans. Without trap management, corridors can become concentrated areas for the next traps. This is why official bodies promote community cooperation, habitat corridors, and technological monitoring together.^{1 7 8}

📝 Curator's Note
Conservation requires multiple units working together. Traps, roads, kitchen waste, and data seem scattered individually, but they all meet along the path of a single bear. The approach of bears from the mountains to humans may reflect changes in how forests and humans are used. We must ask simultaneously: why did the bear come here, and can humans secure what attracts it?

Next Steps: Getting Numbers and Relationships Right Together

The 1,200 estimate for 2026 remains a figure subject to revision. This highlights the starting point of Formosan black bear research. Future needs more local density data from different altitudes, regions, and seasons so that population trends are not limited to an increase in sightings but can also reliably answer whether the population is stable, if habitats are connected, and which threats need attention first.²

Conservation outcomes cannot be measured solely by a bear being photographed by a camera. They also include how many traps were removed, whether injured individuals survive, whether cubs learn to forage in the wild, whether there is space for movement on both sides of roads, and whether communities have enough resources for timely reporting. Research data and local experience must meet on the same map so that the black bear is not only seen when it appears in the news.^{7 6 8}

This is a freely licensed photo from Wikimedia Commons labeled "Formosan black bear." The original file page did not provide a wild location in Taiwan suitable for this text, so it is only provided as a species appearance reference, not evidence of distribution in Taiwan. Image: Abu0804, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The image has been archived in the project.

The white V on the chest of the Formosan black bear was first an identification mark, and later became a conservation symbol. Now, it is more like a question: can we allow an animal with a range spanning tens of square kilometers to have paths outside protected areas, so that when it approaches humans, it is not solely for human food, and so that when we encounter it, we know how to maintain our distance?

The answer will not only be written in the next population estimate. It will appear on the day a mountain hut takes kitchen waste down the mountain, on the path where patrol members remove traps, and in the moment researchers honestly leave an uncertain piece of data in its original place. Whether the Formosan black bear can continue to roam the forests ultimately tests whether we can become more reliable neighbors—reducing the impulse to turn it into a cute pattern and increasing the space for it to move safely.

How Many Types of Data Does One Bear Path Require?

A single automatic camera photo only tells us "a bear was here." It cannot answer how many bears there are, nor can it explain if the same bear was photographed in different locations. The Forestry and Natural Resources Agency compiles sightings, automatic camera data, intrusion reports, and rescue records into one long-term dataset to see changes in record points since 2011.¹

Genetic analysis of scat samples provides another perspective. Research at Yushan National Park collected 725 scat samples between 2010 and 2015, confirming 139 black bears after individual identification. This type of data helps researchers distinguish individuals but still requires time, location, and repeated sampling; it cannot be simply summed up from every single sample.⁴

Radio tracking transforms static "appearances" into a movement path. Researchers can see how Formosan black bears use valleys, ridges, and areas around roads for habitat, and they can compare the behaviors of injured versus healthy individuals. Long-term monitoring also has an easily overlooked scale issue. More bears photographed in a certain season might be due to food maturity or simply because the camera was placed in a different location. An increase in scat samples along a specific trail might indicate concentrated individuals or increased sampling effort. Only by recording the sampling time, location, method, and repeated identification together can researchers determine if an increase in records means population expansion or that we have finally learned to see them better.^{1 4 5}

Different methods have blind spots; only when combined are they sufficient to support decisions regarding habitat corridors, trap management, and human-bear coexistence. For the general reader, this also explains why conservation news often contains different terms like "preliminary estimate," "monitoring," and "record." They all describe the black bear but stand on different evidentiary grounds.^{5 7}

📝 Curator's Note
Conservation data are like different voices transmitted from the mountains. The camera sees a silhouette, genetic data identifies an individual, and the tracker leaves a path of movement. No single type of data can represent the entire mountain alone, but when layered together, it slowly forms the unseen bear path.

Image Credits

This article uses 6 freely-licensed images from Wikimedia Commons. The images are not used as evidence of wild individuals or geographic distribution in Taiwan. Licensing and attribution details for each image are as follows.

• Formosan black bear in an artificial environment: File:Formosan Black Bear01.jpg — Smartneddy, CC BY-SA 3.0. Direct link: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Formosan_Black_Bear01.jpg
• Formosan black bear at Shoushan Zoo: File:Formosan Black Bear in Shoushan Zoo 01.jpg — Tvpuppy, used under the Shoushan Zoo Government Website Open Information Announcement, source attribution required. Direct link: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Formosan_Black_Bear_in_Shoushan_Zoo_01.jpg
• Formosan black bear illustration: File：臺灣黑熊3.png — SilverSea Design/Chofy Lin, CC BY 4.0. Direct link: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/%E8%87%BA%E7%81%A3%E9%BB%91%E7%86%8A3.png/1280px-%E8%87%BA%E7%81%A3%E9%BB%91%E7%86%8A3.png
• Formosan black bear photo: File:19-Formosan Black Bear.JPG — Abu0804, CC BY-SA 3.0. Direct link: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/19-Formosan_Black_Bear.JPG/1280px-19-Formosan_Black_Bear.JPG
• Formosan black bear suckling cubs photo: File:Formosan black bear suckling cubs.jpg — Abu0804, CC BY-SA 3.0. Direct link: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/Formosan_black_bear_suckling_cubs.jpg/1280px-Formosan_black_bear_suckling_cubs.jpg
• Formosan black bear display at Na'an Visitor Center: File:Na'an Visitor Center (22)台灣黑熊.jpg — Toadboat, CC BY-SA 4.0. Archived in project: /article-images/nature/naan-visitor-center-black-bear-display.webp

References

Further Reading

• Formosan Black Bear Conservation Association: Master's and Doctoral Theses — Index of research and theses.
• Yushan National Park: Bear Reporting — Official reporting portal.
• Formosan Black Bear — Forestry and Natural Resources Agency black bear conservation project entrance. This page has been blocked by the website; actual reading relies on accessible official news pages and management office data.