Wildlife officers sacrificed a brown bear on the base of the Eielson Air Drive on Friday after the bear developed harmful habits close to residents.
The bear had been accessing the rubbish and pet meals in residential areas of the army base, in keeping with a press launch. State and wildlife officers tried to discourage the bear with non -lethal strategies and urged residents to make sure meals and meals sources.
Wild life officers had been monitoring the bear in populated areas of the bottom because the 2024 fall.
The bear continued to return to the populated areas after hibernation, and wildlife officers decided that it had grow to be meals and accustomed individuals, so it’s a menace to human safety.
“The bear had been strolling the residential streets, climbing on the fences to the courtyards, strolling in the direction of the entrance doorways and attempting to entry automobiles,” mentioned a spokesman on Friday. “Wild life officers work in Eielson seven days per week to proactively deal with and shield wildlife on the base, exhausting all efforts to discourage the exercise of bears.”
Wild life officers thought of relocating the bear, however decided that relocation was not probably the most human possibility.
“Bears are behavior creatures, and in the event that they have been eradicated from human -related meals sources, wildlife consultants consider that there could be slowly hungry,” mentioned the spokesman.
Wildlife officers sacrificed the bear at roughly 2 within the morning on Friday.
“This was not a choice that we made flippantly,” mentioned the commander of the 354th wing, Colonel Paul P. Towsend. “Our precedence is at all times to maintain individuals and wildlife safely, and we exhaust all cheap choices earlier than reaching this outcome. This bear not behaved naturally: it had come to affiliate people with meals, which made it unpredictable and harmful. It’s a heartbreaking as a result of this case was preventable. The simplest strategy to shield the bears is to make sure that they by no means get hold of entry to human meals within the first place.”
In keeping with publications on social networks, a number of bears have been seen close to Mullins Pit and Anderson Crawford Elementary Faculty in early Could.
The Alaska Fishing and Searching Division says that retaining the bears away from human meals is an important step to stop conflicts between bears and folks, in keeping with Adfg.ALASKA.gov. Wildlife officers advocate storing rubbish and animal feed in protected buildings or bears -proof containers, flattening the hen feeders and cleansing the Alps, not leaving meat and fish unattended in grills or people who smoke, and blocking all doorways and home windows.