In the early 1900s, black bears were common in the Chisos Mountains. By the time the national park was established in 1944, there were virtually no resident bears left. Shooting and trapping by ranchers, federal predator control agents, recreational hunters, and loss of habitat contributed to their decline. Individual bears occasionally wandered in and out of the park from Mexico, but only scattered sightings were reported from the 1940s through the 1980s. In the late 1980s visitors began seeing bears in increasing numbers, and in 1988 a visitor photographed a female with three young cubs in the Chisos Mountains. Observations increased in the 1990s, and in 1996 visitors reported 572 sightings in one year! Today, visitors regularly observe bears throughout the Chisos Mountains, and sometimes even in the desert areas of the park. The recolonization of the black bears in Big Bend is truly a remarkable natural event.