By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
Bear activity continued here this week, with four more shot and killed by police and wildlife officers between Tuesday afternoon and early Wednesday morning.
Fish and Game wildlife biologist Steven Bethune tracked and killed the first two near Thimbleberry Lake Tuesday afternoon.
“Those two bears obviously were very destructive,” Bethune said. “Those were high-priority bears and we kind of had an idea of the area they were using, based on homeowner reports. We did a bunch of trail camera tracking and we worked closely with a few homeowners in the area to pinpoint their movements, and I’d been doing several nights… trying to catch up to them. And I was in the office and got the call saying, ‘Hey, those bears are at our place right now.’”
He estimated the two were between three and four years old, old enough to have left their mother but not fully adult, and likely the same ones that damaged a car and other property in the Cedar Beach area two weeks ago. “There was one pair of siblings that was always together and these were those bears,” Bethune said.
All told, a dozen bears have been shot in town this year because of the danger they posed to life and property.
“Unfortunately, it’s obviously very sad that we’ve had to kill so many bears this year,” Bethune said.
Closed signs are posted at the entrance of Sitka National Historical Park because of bear activity. Sitka has seen an unusually high number of bear encounters in town this season. (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)
Teal West is the owner of the car the bears damaged Oct. 19.
“My back trim and my back bumper were basically ripped off my car,” West told the Sentinel. “I taped the bumper back on but I’m looking at around $6,000 worth of damage.” She said the bear problem is caused by the community’s problem with garbage.
“I’ve lived here my entire life and we never had bear issues in Sitka until the last ten years,” she said. “I don’t think the bear issue is going to go away until the city of Sitka decides to do a centrally located garbage system.”
Bethune was skinning the two juvenile bears when he received word that a third bear was in the Thimbleberry area. He killed that one, a large boar, a little after midnight Wednesday.
He called police dispatch to report shots had been fired and that he had killed the bear.
“And they said, ‘Good, we’ve been trying to reach you. There’s a bear between Peterson and Brady streets that officers had cornered in that ravine,’” Bethune recalled.
A police officer shot that bear with a 12 gauge shotgun.
Bethune said the bear may have been “the largest free-ranging brown bear that I’ve ever been a part of – he squared nearly 9 feet and the weight is approximately 850 pounds… It’s been hitting trash cans and flipping freezers. It might be the bear that flipped over a shed.”
It was in a densely populated area, and Bethune said he and the police officers were careful about the angle of their shooting.
“It’s very difficult, even when we find these bears in town, to get a safe shot on them when we’ve decided they need to be put down,” he said. “And by it being in that ravine, even though it was surrounded on all sides by streets and houses, we had a really steep downhill angle on him, basically shooting down into the ground.”
Getting the carcass out of the ravine was another problem.
“That bear was in a good spot to kill it, but a really bad spot for recovery. So the officers and I decided to leave it lay for the rest of the night,” Bethune said. “It was going on 4 a.m. or 4:30 a.m. or so by the time we left the scene and I hadn’t had any sleep, so I was probably not able to think of all the different options I had. And I was really pleased when the police called me a couple hours later and said they had arranged for the city to bring their boom truck in… The city crew that morning were my favorite people.”
The four bears were skinned and their pelts will be sold by the state, the biologist said.
Bethune hopes that killing these problematic bears will reduce the bear menace in town.
“There are still a couple bears that we know that have displayed aggressive behavior, and I’m really optimistic that this is going to relieve a bunch of pressure in town. Talking to the police this morning (Thursday) there were zero bear calls to the police last night,” he said. “Hopefully in the next couple weeks they’ll disappear, go up into the hills for the winter.”
He said he hopes not to have to shoot any more bears this year, “but we’re still open to killing a couple more bears if we feel like there’s still a public safety threat.”
Looking back, he said, “This has been the worst bear season that I’ve experienced here in Sitka and I’m getting a lot of questions, a lot of other people share that sentiment, lots of long-term residents that it’s never been like this. I get a lot of questions of why? What’s happening and why are the bears acting like this? That’s really the million dollar question, because if I knew why, we could take direct action to alleviate that. And I don’t know why this year is different from other years.”
Bethune spoke at Tuesday’s Assembly meeting just hours after felling the juvenile bears near Thimbleberry.
“Sitka has a garbage problem,” he said in his statement to the Assembly.
“Neither I or any of my agency colleagues like killing bears or the labor that ensues but will continue to do so as necessary,” he testified. “However, removing bears from the population only serves to treat the symptom and fails to cure the root problem. As long as that root issue remains, we will continue to have bears using our residential neighborhoods. That problem can be linked directly to Sitka’s current garbage disposal system and the unwillingness or inability of some members of the public to properly store trash.”
Bethune urged the use of bear-resistant trash cans and also suggested electric fences as a bear deterrent.
“Electric fences are a great option,” Bethune told the Sentinel. “I’m going to start pushing those much more heavily and I actually have about half a dozen on order that will be available for people to checkout on a short-term basis to try it and get an idea of how they work.”
