That fatality is among only 12 cases of black bears killing humans in the contiguous United States in the last century, according to the North American Bear Center in Ely, Minnesota.
Forty-five other black bear killings have been reported in Canada and Alaska in the same period.
With more than 750,000 black bears in North America, "only one black bear out of … over a million becomes a killer," Rogers said.
He adds that people are more than a hundred times more likely to be killed by bees in the United States than by a black bear.
Timid by Nature
Some bear experts warn that bear attacks may increase as more people visit and live in remote areas, where bears are not used to humans.
Rainer Brocke, a retired professor of wildlife biology at the State University of New York at Syracuse, says places where bears are routinely hunted are safer.
"In areas where the black bear is hunted, the animals develop a fear of humans and the chances for having attacks of this type are less common," Brocke told USA Today.
But Rogers, the bear center director, stresses that the animals are generally very timid.
In the almost four decades he has worked with wild bears, Rogers says he has been bitten once, and only after he touched a bear.
This morning, in fact, he found a black bear inside his home in northeastern Minnesota.
"It just quietly left," he said.
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