Last week, a young black bear was spotted in Kent, Queen Anne’s and Talbot counties on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. A few weeks earlier, another young bear worked its way through St. Mary’s, Calvert and southern Anne Arundel counties. That 140-pound youngster was on its way to Baltimore when it was tracked down in Arbutus. Wildlife authorities determined it was in danger — too close to the highway — so they tranquilized it and moved it to friendlier bear habitat in Western Maryland.

Right now the bear spottings are novelties, just photo opportunities for the curious. But if bears follow the path of other urbanized wildlife, we humans will love them, put up with them and, eventually, want them to go away.

A bear will eventually be hit by a car, rifle through trash cans or attack a pet poodle. It’s going to happen. By then, they won’t be the camera phone cuties, they’ll be a nuisance, and they will make us uncomfortable. And while wildlife experts say black bears are not as aggressive as grizzlies or polar bears, any animal becomes more dangerous if it has to adapt to uncomfortable situations — like rummaging through trash.

It’s a little early to see how residents of more populous areas will react if bears become more neighborly.

But we do not have the choice of allowing wildlife into our company; we have to learn to live with it.

“Black bears are wild animals that move across the landscape where and when they choose,” said Paul Peditto, director of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources’ Wildlife and Heritage Service.

Bears have been making a comeback in Maryland since the 1950s, when decades of development and hunting wiped out all but a dozen of the species. Maryland wildlife experts say there are about 600 bears living in the state today, most in Garrett, Allegany, Washington and Frederick counties. They are the largest wild animal in the state, most weighing between 125 and 400 pounds.

These animals like to roam. They can travel 25 miles a day and often have home ranges of 10 square miles.

Young bears like to travel to establish their own territory — explaining the recent sightings outside existing bear habitat. The Eastern Shore bear likely wandered down from Pennsylvania, which is home to about 15,000 bears.

Our best approach is to take steps to prevent bears from becoming nuisances. But it’s an approach we haven’t done well with other animals. We loved white-tailed deer when we only saw them occasionally. But people started feeding them, and they got a little too comfortable in our neighborhoods. Now we associate them with landscape damage, disease and traffic accidents. Now they are in our way.

There’s a television commercial running these days that shows a giraffe sticking its tongue in a kid’s drink and an elephant sitting on a car. I guess it’s supposed to show how exciting it is to touch the wild, but I want to shout to stop feeding that giraffe — it’s not a poodle or a guinea pig.

I’d love to see a healthy bear population in appropriate Maryland habitats. Maybe some young ones will discover Aberdeen Proving Ground, Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge or some other area where they are less likely to be bothered or bothersome.

We can’t plan what will happen to the black bears of Maryland. That’s the beauty of nature. But we can be responsible about them. We absolutely can’t treat them like pets, feeding them like ducks or squirrels. We need to give them a little space, perhaps protecting some areas where they can be left alone. Maybe it will mean taking a few extra steps on our own land, to reduce litter and other temptations.

In the end, we will either find a way to coexist with these beautiful animals or react the way our forefathers did — hunting, developing and chasing them to near extinction, for another generation to worry about.