A Bear at the Wave:
What’s going on at Wire Pass – and what to do if you see a bear out here

In early summer 2026, a black bear cub started showing up around the Wire Pass trailhead – the same sandy parking area where hikers set out for the Wave, Buckskin Gulch, and the Coyote Buttes backcountry. The BLM and Wildlife Services have confirmed there are two orphaned cubs in the area, though only one has been seen near the trailhead so far.

EDITED: our original post relayed information about the cubs being out there on their own due to a legal harvest of the sow. This information turned out to not be verifiable.

We posted about it on our Facebook page and the comments came fast: curiosity, worry, and a lot of good questions. This post is our attempt to answer them in one place – for folks following the story, and for anyone who lands here months or years from now wondering whether there are really bears in this corner of the desert.

The short version: yes there really are bears in this corner of the desert, sometimes. Keep reading. 

Sighting of a black bear cub at Wire Pass Trailhead, summer 2026 – photo credit Bureau of Land Management.

Wait – there are bears near the Wave?

Not usually standing in the parking lot, no. But in the bigger picture, yes, and it surprises people every time.

The only bear in this region is the American black bear. Grizzlies have been gone from Utah and Arizona for close to a century. Black bears here live up high, in the cool forested country that brackets our desert: the Kaibab Plateau to the south (the North Kaibab, the big forest that runs all the way to the Grand Canyon’s North Rim) and the Paunsaugunt Plateau to the north, the 8,000-to-9,000-foot highland that Bryce Canyon is carved into. Bryce visitors spot black bears from time to time along the forested rim, and the North Kaibab holds a healthy population that hunters, hikers, and mule deer all know well.

Between those two plateaus sits the low desert where we spend most of our days: slickrock, sand, and not much water. It’s poor bear habitat, but it isn’t a wall. Canyon corridors like the Paria River and Buckskin Gulch hold water, shade, and food, and they connect the high country to everything in between. Every so often a bear uses them. Over the years, guests and guides have found bear scat along the route to the Wave and down in the Paria – one hiker told us he came across fresh scat hiking in to the Wave in October 2023; Dreamland co-owner Sunny has spotted bear scat in the Paria several times over the past few years. So a bear near Wire Pass is unusual, but it has never been impossible.

Why is this cub hanging around Wire Pass?

EDITED: our original post relayed information about the cubs being out there on their own due to a legal harvest of the sow. This information turned out to not be verifiable.

Here’s what we know:  two cubs have been reported to be out there on their own. One of them has been seen around the Wire Pass trailhead and the surrounding backcountry.

Why the trailhead specifically? We can’t read a bear’s mind, but trailheads smell like people, and people smell like food – coolers, snack wrappers, the trash that doesn’t quite make it into a pack. A young bear without a mother is a young bear looking for easy calories. 

Thinking about trying to get permits to hike the Wave?  The process isn’t easy – but we can help.

Some commenters also wondered whether the fires on the Kaibab have pushed wildlife into new territory. It’s a fair thought – big burns do displace animals while food and water sources reestablish – though nobody has confirmed that’s part of this particular story. What we know for sure is simpler: he (or she) is young, alone, and in a place with a lot of human traffic. That combination is exactly what worries us.

Cubs left behind by a mom that was “legally harvested.” Let’s talk about it.

When early information indicated that the cubs were orphaned after the sow was ‘legally harvested’, that phrase upset a lot of people, and we understand why.  Per our earlier comments, the ‘cubs-orphaned-by-legal-harvest’ narrative turned out to be non-verifiable so we could leave it at that – but if you’re still curious,  the following context may be of interest to you:

We’re wildlife watchers by trade and by temperament – we spend our days pointing out condors and desert bighorn, and seeing orphaned cubs at one of our favorite trailheads is hard for us too. It’s also true that regulated hunting is legal in Arizona and funds a large share of wildlife management in this country. Hunters aren’t allowed to take a sow with cubs, but cubs aren’t always at their mother’s side, and this is how orphans sometimes happen anyway.

In the end, ‘cubs orphaned by a hunt’ does not seem to be the situation at hand here – but that doesn’t change the fact that we have unsupervised bear cubs hanging out near Wire Pass. What we can influence – what you can influence – is what happens to these cubs next. And that part has nothing to do with hunting and everything to do with how people behave at Wire Pass.

Can’t they just relocate the cub?

The most common suggestion in the comments, and a fair one.

The straight answer is that it isn’t our call, and it’s more complicated than it sounds. Wildlife decisions here belong to the state agencies – Arizona Game and Fish and the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, depending on which side of the state line the bear happens to be standing – working alongside the BLM. Relocated bears often try to walk home, or struggle to establish themselves in unfamiliar country that usually already belongs to another bear. Orphaned cubs are sometimes placed with licensed rehabilitators instead, and that may yet happen here if the agencies decide it’s the right move.

In the meantime, the most useful thing the public can do is not force anyone’s hand. A cub that stays wary and wild keeps all of his options open. A cub that learns to work the parking lot loses them fast.

Will the cubs make it?

Nobody can promise you a happy ending, and we won’t.

But it’s not hopeless either. By midsummer, a cub born in the den in January or February is around six months old and already eating solid food. Wildlife biologists have found that cubs orphaned at that age – old enough to forage on their own – survive more often than most people would guess. These two have a real chance.

The biggest variable left is us. There’s an old saying among wildlife managers: a fed bear is a dead bear. A bear that comes to associate humans with food gets bolder and bolder around people, until an agency is left with no safe choice. That’s the ending everyone in our comment section is dreading, and it’s the one ending that’s fully preventable.

What to do if you see a bear at Wire Pass (or anywhere in this desert)

• Give it room. A hundred yards is the standard, and your zoom lens exists for a reason. No photo is worth teaching a cub that humans are safe to approach.
• Never feed it – and “leaving a little something to help” counts as feeding. So does the apple core you tossed because it’s biodegradable.
• Keep food sealed and trash in your vehicle, not in a truck bed or beside a tire while you hike.
• If a bear approaches, don’t run. Stand tall, speak firmly, back away slowly, and give it a way out. Black bears are rarely aggressive toward people, and most encounters end with the bear leaving.
• Keep dogs leashed.
• Report sightings to the BLM – the Kanab Visitor Center or the Paria Contact Station on Highway 89 are the closest points of contact.

None of this requires a guide or any special expertise. It just requires the discipline to stay a spectator.

Long after this cub’s story ends

If you’re reading this the week the news broke, thank you for caring enough to get informed. If you’re reading it years later because you spotted scat in the Paria or heard a rumor of a bear near the Wave, everything above still applies. Bears live on the plateaus on either side of this desert – above Bryce Canyon to the north, across the North Kaibab to the south – and every so often one follows a canyon down into our backyard. That’s not a crisis, just a reminder that this landscape is still connected enough, and wild enough, for a bear to walk through it.

We hope this one gets to.

Visit the Wave with us!

No permit? That’s what our Wave Conditional Tour is for – read more here or give us a call at 801.251.6036.