Editor’s note: This piece is the first of a two-part series exploring plans to rebuild I-40 through the Pigeon River Gorge and the project’s implication for wildlife populations. Part two will appear in next week’s the Smoky Mountain News.

When I-40 through the Pigeon River Gorge first opened in October 1968, it was hailed as a triumph of human accomplishment, the dawn of a new era for travel, tourism, and economic opportunity in newly linked Haywood County, North Carolina, and Cocke County, Tennessee.

We love our bears here in the Smokies. It’s estimated there are around 15,000 in the four-state area surrounding the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and they’ve become an iconic symbol of the region. 

So, it’s no wonder that of the hundreds of stories we published on The Smoky Mountain News website in 2025, it was one about relocating bears that was the most popular.

The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission advises that black bears’ eating behavior changes in the late summer through fall. They significantly increase their food consumption to prepare for the colder months when natural food is less available. It’s called hyperphagia and it means “extreme appetite.” Which means they are on the search. 

The National Park Service urges visitors to not feed or approach black bears in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The park has seen an increase in incidents involving visitors feeding bears. Feeding wildlife is illegal and endangers you, other visitors and bears. 

Smokies Life is thrilled to announce its first audiobook, a narrated adaptation of the 2021 release for middle-grade readers, “A Search for Safe Passage,” about an intrepid group of animals trying to find their way across a dangerous highway. 

The four-state mountain region that includes Great Smoky Mountains National Park is home to an estimated 14,500 black bears, but one particular animal had caught the attention of a watchful police chief in one of the park’s gateway communities.

The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC) advises the public that black bears in North Carolina are in their “winter homes,” which could be anything from a pile of brush, a hollowed-out tree, a rock cavity, an excavation under a fallen tree or even under the deck or in the crawl space of your home. 

When the Safe Passage coalition started working in 2017 to make Interstate 40 a safer place for people and wildlife through the Pigeon River Gorge, nobody knew that, in a few short years, entire sections of the critical roadway would vanish in the wake of Hurricane Helene.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is home to an estimated 1,900 black bears — about two per square mile — with more than 14,500 of these iconic mammals roaming the four-state mountain region.

During its Feb. 22 meeting, the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission voted to adopt a slate of proposed rule changes for the coming year, including a pair of controversial measures that will shift the season dates for white-tailed deer and significantly expand the season length for black bear in the mountain region.