Other states give bears 2nd chances, but officials say Neb.'s case different

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BY CARA PESEK / Lincoln Journal Star

A day after state officials shot a young bear in northwest Nebraska, a Game and Parks official said killing an animal is never the first choice in dealing with a potentially dangerous animal.

But Jeff Hoffman believed it was the right thing to do in the case of the bear that wandered  through Harrison on Monday.

Twice in the span of just a few hours, the bear was spotted in town and on a nearby ranch, Hoffman said.

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Lori Windsor of Harrison took this photo of a black bear after it was confined in a barn near Harrison. (Courtesy Lori Windsor)

Lori Windsor of Harrison took this photo of a black bear after it was confined in a barn near Harrison. (Courtesy Lori Windsor)

That’s unusual, he said. Large predatory animals like bears and mountain lions tend to stay away from places where people are.

And once bears lose their fear of humans, he said, they’re more likely to be dangerous.  

“That was a great concern,” he said.

The Game and Parks Commission doesn’t have a protocol in place for dealing with bears that wander too close to civilization, because bear sightings in Nebraska are so rare, Hoffman said. The last bear was killed in Nebraska in 1907.

Instead, officers applied the protocol designed to deal with mountain lions.

But after Monday, he said, Game and Parks officials began talking about the possibility of coming up with a plan specific to bears.

In Colorado, which has a relatively large bear population, the Colorado Division of Wildlife has a two-strike policy, said spokeswoman Jennifer Churchill.

The first time a bear behaves aggressively or ventures too close to where humans live, it’s trapped, ear-tagged and relocated, Churchill said.

If the bear behaves aggressively or ventures into town again, the bear may be killed.

“It does depend,” Churchill said.  “It’s really up to the official’s discretion.”

Last year, a late freeze killed many of the plants and berries that make up much of a bear’s spring diet, she said. That drove hungry bears into towns and cities.

Division of Wildlife officials killed 63 bears in 2007, which, she said, is higher than average.

Churchill said she couldn’t speculate on whether the bear killed in Nebraska might have been ear-tagged and released instead — the states are just too different.

“You don’t have the kind of bear situations that we have here,” she said.

In Wyoming, bears are also often given several chances, said Game and Fish Department game warden Jon Stephens.

Like in Colorado, bears that venture into campgrounds or communities are often trapped, tagged and relocated first.

But Stephens said for a bear to appear in a community and on a ranch in a matter of hours was troubling.

“Once a bear has been habituated to people, it becomes that much bolder, that much braver,” Stephens said.

And that’s when the bear becomes a safety issue, he said.

It’s more difficult to relocate bears in Nebraska than in Colorado or Wyoming because Nebraska lacks large tracts of public land far from people and livestock, Hoffman said. And states don’t generally relocate wild animals in neighboring states.

Moving the bear likely would have meant letting it loose on someone else’s property, he said. 

Had the Harrison bear been spotted walking through a field instead of through a town, state officials would have let the bear be, and hoped it eventually wandered out of the state, Hoffman said.

But the 2-year-old black bear that visited Harrison didn’t seem to be merely passing through, which is why officials made the decision to kill the animal, a decision both difficult and unpopular.

“We don’t want to kill these animals,” Hoffman said. “That’s the last thing we want to do.”

Reach Cara Pesek at 473-7361 or cpesek@Journalstar.com.