Contributed Photo/Courtesy TPD: The male black bear was treed in Thatcher before being tranquilized and removed by the Arizona Game & Fish Department. The bear was then euthanized per department policy.
By Jon Johnson
THATCHER – A juvenile black bear was tranquilized and then euthanized by the Arizona Game & Fish Department on Monday, after it wandered into a Thatcher neighborhood.
The bear was first seen near Eastern Arizona College at 8:17 p.m.
The bear was then spotted at about 9:53 p.m. in the area of some pecan trees south of Porter Lane along 1st Street.
According to a Thatcher Police report, the bear was cornered and ran up a tree outside the seminary building at the Thatcher Middle School.
Officers from the Arizona Game & Fish Department responded to the scene and tranquilized and removed the bear, which was described as being cinnamon in color and weighing about 70 pounds.
According to Arizona Game & Fish Department Public Information Officer Mark Hart, the department’s policy toward male nuisance black bears is to euthanize them. That policy came about after a young girl was attacked on Mount Lemmon near Tucson in 1996 by a relocated male black bear.
“We don’t relocate male bears that become nuisances or are perceived as dangerous,” Hart said. “We have zero tolerance for male bears who get into human-occupied areas or otherwise are a nuisance. Females and cubs are routinely relocated because they are less aggressive.”
He added that with the bear being near a school even though they aren’t in session it was even more of a reason to euthanize to eliminate the chance of the bear ever returning.
Hart said there have been a couple of other recent sightings of bears at lower elevations in Oracle north of Tucson and Nogales, where bears were searching for food. Hart surmised that might have been the case for the Thatcher bear as well.
“The bear was probably foraging,” he said.
The black bear is the only bear species still found in Arizona and generally hibernates from November through March. They are omnivores with a range of between 7 – 50 square miles and mostly live in woodland habitats in Arizona. While they are called black bears, they range in color from black to brown and even blonde in some cases, with males growing up to about 350 pounds and females to about 250 pounds.
Related Posts
