By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
A brown bear previously known to local authorities was shot and killed by a resident on Ring Island Saturday.
Police received a report at 5:52 p.m. Saturday that the bear was shot after it threatened the resident’s dogs.
It was the second bear killed in town this year, although the first was shot by police, not by a resident.
The shooting was in defense of life or property, Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist Steve Bethune told the Sentinel Monday.
“It was threatening his dogs. That was, for that individual, the bottom line justification for that DLP,” Bethune said. Ring Island is located at the southern end of Jamestown Bay.
Bethune said the animal had been on his radar.
“This was a fairly well-known bear, and this is the bear that’s been hanging out in the Sawmill Creek area, Shotgun Cove, Knutson, by the fish processing plant,” he said. “(It) had not necessarily acted aggressively, but was becoming more and more habituated to people and just increasingly comfortable being around people in their yards, on their porches.”
Over time and with exposure to people, the bear wasn’t reacting to attempts to drive it away.
“Not reacting to people making hazing attempts – just doing bear things, but just in real close proximity to people. Normally, we don’t euthanize bears who are habituated to people and not acting aggressively, but in consultation with the troopers, we had decided that this bear needed to be removed. So this was a bear that we had been actively looking for a safe opportunity to remove,” the biologist said. The male bear was about four years old, he estimated.
He said he felt “a public safety threat was really imminent.” The bear had been involved in a “negative interaction with a dog” previously, he noted.
While this bear was the second killed in Sitka so far this year, it comes after a record year of bear incidents in 2021. The total of 14 bears killed in and around Sitka then was the highest ever for one year.
This year’s first bear was shot by police July 24 on Sirstad Street near Sitka High School.
For the time being, Bethune is keeping an eye on a handful of other bears around town, but none has yet struck him as a major problem.
“We’re continuing to get reports,” he said. “There’s a couple of sows with cubs in town we’re just kind of keeping an eye on. Nobody’s been aggressive.”
