ATLANTA — It's always exciting when a viewer sends in pictures of a bear sighting. Usually, once a year, we'll see a bear camped out in someone's backyard or trying to get into their bird feeder.
But this year, we got a whole lot of pictures. It seemed like a lot more than usual.
So we sent our Kaitlyn Ross to VERIFY.
THE QUESTION
Are we seeing more bear sightings than normal this year?
THE ANSWER
Yes, according to the DNR, there have been more bear sightings around the area this year.
WHAT WE KNOW
Our newsroom received pictures from Norcross, Sandy Springs, Alpharetta, and other cities around the area. People were getting up close pictures of bears in their backyards and around their community.
Pictures spread around the Nextdoor app and Facebook, where people wanted to know if this is normal.
Kaitlin Goode, the Urban Wildlife Project Manager for the DNR, says she fields calls about bears roaming metro areas.
"If you see bears, make sure you give them lots of space and don't try to provide any food source for them," Goode said.
She says they started getting a lot of calls about bears this summer and made this map to track the different sightings.
"We had one bear that was in the Norcross area, and he moved out of Gwinnett County to Jackson County, he followed the I-85 corridor. And then we had another bear in Sandy Springs, where we worked with the PD and FF to get out and relocate to the mountains," Goode explained.
She says that's not the norm.
"We had an unusual circumstance this year where we actually had two bears in the metro Atlanta area instead of the usual one we have each summer," Goode said.
So, while there aren't many bears roaming around metro Atlanta, we can verify that yes, there have been more sightings this year than usual.
11Alive's Verify team is here to fact-check claims being shared in the community and online. Fill out the form below with something you'd like us to Verify.