The yearling black bear had was killed in a residential area near the Pullen Creek RV Park in Skagway. (Photo courtesy of Ann Moore)
The Skagway Police Department shot and killed a bear cub Saturday after attempting to scare the bear away from a residential area. Since then, more details have emerged about why police shot the bear and efforts to relocate it before the shooting took place.
The yearling black bear cub first appeared in Skagway around Thanksgiving.
In a post made Sunday on Facebook, the Skagway Police Department reported that the bear was attracted to the area by apples in residents’ front yards. After hearing safety concerns from parents and pet owners, the police attempted to scare the bear away Saturday afternoon.
According to Skagway Police Chief Ray Leggit, the cub became aggressive by growling and charging the officer attempting to scare it away. Leggit says Police shot the bear in response.
“He growled and charged at the officer. That tells us that he’s going to growl and charge at possibly anyone. When that attitude and demeanor moves to that level I believe it’s a heightened sense of concern for the public. I mean, you cannot have a bear take up residence in people’s yards,” Leggit said.
According to Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Carl Koch, the cub was young and would probably not have survived on its own.
“In this case, it was not an orphan. It was supposed to be on its own,” Koch said. “Just happened to be in very poor condition for a bear of that age,”
The yearling black bear weighed 45 pounds, which is underweight according to Koch.
Police say they discussed moving the bear to a captive facility with ADF&G, but Koch says it would have been difficult to find a place that could take the bear.
“If facilities want it, there’s a permitting process through the state and the permitting biologists examine whether the facility is capable of caring for an animal. If they have enough space to humanely care for them and they’ve fulfilled all of their requirements and things like that. Being that it was not a cub from this year, it’s likely that no facility would have wanted it anyway,” Koch said.
There was one facility that was willing to take the yearling black bear.
Evy Kinnear is the co-director of Fortress of the Bear, a bear rescue center based in Sitka. She says she was contacted by a Skagway resident about the roaming bear on Thursday and would have housed it if Fish and Game agreed. She was never contacted by the police department or Fish and Game about the bear.
However, Kinnear says the Fortress of the Bear’s state permits are maxed out. At the moment, the center is not allowed to take in any more cubs.
Chief Leggit says that the department did everything it could to keep the cub away from the public while an adequate facility was arranged for the bear.
“Our goal was to keep him hemmed up until the top folks up there could get a permitted place. You know, just because someone said they’ll take it—there’s a process and Fish and Game has a process and we’re obliged by that process. We were just working within the system we had to hold this bear off the best we could,” Leggit said.
After the shooting, the bear’s carcass was sent to the ADF&G office in Douglas for examination.
Correction: A previous version of this story included a photo of a spring brown bear cub in Haines. The bear shot in Skagway was a yearling black bear.
