DNR shoots bear in Myrick Park-La Crosse

Lots of good blogs on this one – what do you think?

http://www.lacrossetribune.com/articles/2009/06/30/news/00lead.txt

Tuff to tell from this picture, but this isn’t another Super Trooper prank is it??

On a serious note, we are going to continue to see wild animals expand into our communities as the expansion of wolves and mountain lions continue to go unchecked. These animals tend to compete for food and will continue to look for areas with less competition. While a black bear isn’t known to be a fierce meat eater like the others, she also has young cubs who will need protection from the said predators.

I read the story through quickly… here’s my quick thoughts on it.

A black beer wandering through a town park with dozens of people in the park, in broad daylight, with cars trailing it.. is not acting naturally. I’ve had a few bear encounters and wild bears head for the hills when they smell, see or hear anything even remotely connected to a human.

I’m not going to second guess the DNR. Did they do the right thing, did they do it wrong? I don’t know. I wasn’t there faced with the decision.

I agree with James, but I would have to say they made the decision they thought was best under the circumstances. That is all we (the public) should ask for.

Bears, like deer, can become “urbanized”. Duluth, Two Harbors, Silver Bay….they all see bear inside city limits every year. Any northern town can have this happen. Unlike northern communities, bears inside a city are not an everyday thing and generally they will get tons of attention. Bear have claws and can kill in a blink if cornered or threatened. In this case I think I’d agree with the action taken. Further north I think darting them and putting them away from human concentrations is a warranted action.

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“Why this bear came so far into the city is kind of a mystery,” Dewald said. “My only guess is he was used to getting food from people and was raiding garbage cans.”

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A fed bear is a dead bear! The same do-gooders who poo poo the DNR for shooing these bears are probalby the same folks who put out food or don’t secure their garbage from these animals.

-J.

The authorities made the correct decision IMO.
In this day in age “somebody takes anybody” to court over spilled milk. Playing the “if” game….IF the bear had in fact turned on an “innocent” civilian there’s a pretty good probability the city has a law suite on their hands.

This could have been prevented with a simple sign like they use in B.C. Canada.

Save the bears!

Well this shouldn’t be an issue ever again according to our same DNR. They keep telling residents in the LaCrosse area that there’s only one bear in the area. If that’s the case I guess we shouldn’t see one again.

Seriously, there are sightings all the time, and we are continuosly told that we’re all seeing the same bear. Of course, this comes from the same DNR that invented Earn a Buck because of the over population of whitetails.

I spoke with a friend of mine who was golfing at Forest Hills on Saturday morning. The Warden was warning people that this bear was wandering around on the golf course and they should keep an eye out for it.

My position is that if they knew it was in town, why didn’t they find some guys with hounds to run him out of town? I’m sure they could have found a pack of bear hounds and got the dogs on him and gave him a run. A little pressure like that will train a bear real quick to leave an area. I know several guys in Westby that would have come up to run him.

The bottom line is its done and over with, you can’t unring a bell or get toothpaste back in a tube. The DNR and LAX PD made a decision and will have to live by their decision and actions.

see.. warning the people and getting some one to chase it away would make too much sense.. This is LaCrosse. Where we SHOOT FIRST AND ASK QUESTIONS LATER..

this bear needed killin’ and that’s all there is to say about it..

this is the SAME TOWN, where they took the bear FROM THE SAME ZOO and had it shot on some GAME FARM as a BEAR HUNT..

the bear that had lived in the zoo for years.. Dopey as heck, put him in the wild for 20 minutes and he gets his brains blown out by some “sportsman hunter”..

YEP.. this is the same town.. Very ANTI BEAR…

The sign was actually a joke. I wasn’t serious. If you read it you’ll find it quite humorous.

I support this shooting fully. It is not the bear’s fault that he goes to the park. Due to populations explosions and developments, his world was not what it used to be. I feel sorry for the bear that this is what it has become!!

That being said…it is a wild animal and wild animals are unpredictable…period. Just like the couple in Alaska that said the brown bears were peaceful and harmless. He lived with them for many years until one of the bears attacked and killed them both. Heck…I don’t even trust certain family dogs around my kids…let alone a black bear.

I know this is a black bear and not a grizzly. Still…a wild animal that can, at times, be dangerous. The bear was desensitized to humans and therefore a risk for many more encounters. Trap it and put it in a zoo would be fine. Let it roam until a small kid playing at the playground runs up to it, before an adult can stop him or her, and they get mauled or killed. NO WAY!!! Hundreds of kids play there every day if not every few days. I wonder how many people would be in an uproar if that happened…why didn’t they get rid of that bear…how could this happen…lawsuits occur…the dnr is the bad guy…it goes on and on.

From what I understand…they tried to relocate the bear more than once and it came back. Do I think they should have shot it in front of all the people…not really. Tranquilizer and figure it out later might have pleased the public eye more. Bottom line…it had to be removed permanently!!!

Thank you DNR for taking action and removing the bear from an area where my 3 and 5 year old children regularly play!!

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The sign was actually a joke. I wasn’t serious. If you read it you’ll find it quite humorous.

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This is a funny sign, and a great post, welcome to the site!

We are seeing more unusual animals in our area here in eastern Iowa. A couple weeks back we had sightings of a black bear here…we don’t have bears here normally…last year we had sightings of a mountain lion…we are the ones invading the animals home areas and they are trying to find new areas to live. Kind of a vicious cycle if you ask me, who is getting overpopulated..us or the animals? I think we are going to see an alarming increase in animals in places they historicly are not known to be seen…just gonna have to get used to it if we don’t change our ways.

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My position is that if they knew it was in town, why didn’t they find some guys with hounds to run him out of town? I’m sure they could have found a pack of bear hounds and got the dogs on him and gave him a run. A little pressure like that will train a bear real quick to leave an area. I know several guys in Westby that would have come up to run him.

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Very good thought in my opinion. My reaction after seeing the report on the news was the shooting wasn’t justified. Reason being the report said, more or less casually, that officials had forgotten their tranq gun and therefor decided to just shoot the bear with whatever gun they could find. Not quoting obviously but it was the impression I was given. I wondered at that time why they didn’t chase the bear off with some ATVs and a large group of people hollering and shouting. Teach the bear to not like humans. If it comes back then maybe act. While I don’t want to second guess them either, not knowing the full details, it doesn’t seem like all the towns up north kill every wild animal that wanders into town.

Bottom line is no one got hurt and bears are not extinct. Sadly this bear had to pay a price. But at least it didn’t die dead tired after being chased by dogs for several weeks before a magical date on a calender.