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RALEIGH (MCT) — Two bear sightings in Raleigh on Thursday and the one in Garner a day earlier were likely of a single, confused young animal who accidentally wandered into the area while hunting for a new rural home, a state biologist said.

"He's just looking for a way out of town, but everywhere he goes he's surrounded by it," said Greg Batts, the state wildlife biologist for an 11-county area that includes Wake.

Batts said he saw a cellphone photo of the bear spotted in Garner and that it appeared to be a juvenile male weighing between 125 and 150 pounds. That fits a profile: Mama bears boot out their male cubs after the cubs' second winter in the den, usually in March or April. The young bear then has to go find unoccupied territory to make its own home.

That can force some serious wandering, because male bears, which can top 600 pounds, require as much as 70 square miles of turf, Batts said. "They're big animals, and they don't get big by sitting in one place," he said.

The bear population and range in North Carolina has been expanding for decades. There are now 12,000 to 14,000 bears in the state, nearly two-thirds of them between Interstate 95 and the coast and the rest west of Interstate 77.

From coastal areas, the population has been moving up the river corridors and then fanning out into agricultural land.

Batts thinks the Garner-Raleigh bear may have come from a group of bears in the Benson area of Johnston County.

With the population continuing to expand, such accidental incursions into urban and suburban parts of the Triangle could get more common, but it's unlikely bears will make such places their home, Batts said.

Black bears are shy, and Batts said he is unaware of any unprovoked attack on humans in the state. There is almost no danger from this one, if people leave it alone, said Geoff Cantrell, a spokesman for the state Wildlife Resources Commission.

"There is no real reason for alarm," Cantrell said. "Yes, it's larger than a typical squirrel or bunny, but it wants to stay away from you as much as you want to stay away from it, and it just wants to go on its way."

Actually, it's the scared young bear that's in danger, Batts said. The bear was sighted near Lake Wheeler Road just south of the Beltline, where it would have to travel at least five or six miles to get away from heavy concentrations of humans.

"Unfortunately, the way these cases usually end is the bear gets hit by a car," Batts said. "I hope this one finds his way out to the country, but it doesn't look like that will be easy."