By Sentinel Staff
Responding to a call at 6:26 p.m. Tuesday night, Sitka police officers shot and killed three bears at the Jarvis Street solid waste transfer station.
The sow and her two cubs had been present in the area for some time, police department executive assistant Serena Wild told the Sentinel today.
“The big container that they shove all our trash off into, they were down in that bin... It was an ongoing issue of them getting into the bin,” Wild said.
“We got a report that they were in there and it’s been an ongoing issue,” Wild said, “and after those three bears were dispatched... we got another call...There’s definitely another bear at the transfer station still.”
The transfer station has become a common place for bears to congregate, Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist Steve Bethune said.
“There are several bears that are using the transfer station on a regular basis, most visibly the sow and two cubs that we dispatched last night,” he said. The night prior to the killing of the three bears, a total of eight were at the station, though not all at once, he said.
Police did not say whether the bears that were shot Tuesday night were the same ones that got into the same transfer station bin some time before 6 a.m. last Thursday. In that incident, the sow managed to climb out, but a transfer station worker had to open one end of the bin to allow the two cubs to escape. Once freed, all three of those bears went into the nearby woods.
The bears killed Tuesday had caused damage at the transfer station, Bethune said.
“The frequency of calls and the frequency of sightings, whether it’s daytime or night time, it’s starting to become a public safety hazard...At some point I decide they’re potentially dangerous,” Bethune said.
The biologist noted that while he intended to take the bears himself, he instructed police officers to do it if they could.
“We’re just in constant communication, and I had communication to them that if an opportunity presented itself, to kill them if they could... I had intended to try to take them myself, and there’s a lot of metal there. So you have to be really careful about your shot placement,” Bethune said.
There’s a chance that another bear at the transfer station may be dispatched, and Bethune noted that the two juvenile bears that damaged vehicles south of town are a high priority as well.
“There’s still bears there. We may attempt to kill another bear at the transfer station,” Bethune said, “and my high priority bears are the two bears that have broken into cars down Sawmill Creek Road...We’re actively seeking those bears and that is absolutely past the line.”
He urged Sitkans to take care to secure their garbage.
“As a community we need to stay hyper-vigilant about our garbage. It’s all about garbage,” he said.
