Nevada wildlife wardens euthanize second Lake Tahoe black bear this week
Submitted by editor on Fri, 08/28/2015 - 4:08pm
For the second time this week and fifth time this year a black bear was euthanized because it was seen as a threat to public safety, the Nevada Department of Wildlife said Friday.
A yearling female bear, about 18 months of age, was trapped during the evening hours between Thursday night and Friday morning in the Kingsbury area of Douglas County, located on Lake Tahoe’s south shore.
The trap was set earlier this week after a bear in the area, fitting the description of the bear caught Friday, had entered two different houses in search of food, according to a NDOW statement. The bear was euthanized as a threat to public safety. It is the fifth bear euthanized in 2015 as a threat to public safety and the second this week. A nine-year old male bear was captured and euthanized this past Tuesday in Incline Village as a threat to public safety.
“We hate having to do this but a bear entering a house is a dangerous bear and the Nevada Department of Wildlife is obligated to manage the situation,” said NDOW Public Information Officer Chris Healy. “We have an obligation to public safety that we do not take lightly. People have called and asked us to move the bear but we cannot move a bear that we know to be dangerous, that just would not be prudent.”
Healy advises that people in “bear country” have a special obligation to not attract bears to their property. “Garbage that is carelessly managed and left available to bears is what creates situations like today. If you want to keep bears alive and wild then you need to not attract them to your property where they become habituated to human sources of food.”
The bear that was euthanized Friday was a yearling female that had first been captured in the same area last year as a cub. It came from a litter of three (a female and two males), born in the winter of 2014 to a female who is now 19-20 years old. The sow was first caught in 2004 as a 9-year-old and has taught multiple litters to become habituated to garbage and other sources of human-provided food, according to NDOW.
The yearling euthanized Friday is the third of her offspring to be euthanized for breaking in to homes. Two of the sow’s cubs from previous litters have also been euthanized in similar situations, NDOW states.
