After killing six bears — two sows and four cubs — that entered homes in Colorado Springs last week, the state Division of Wildlife found itself cast as incompetent managers at best, cold-hearted killers at worst.
“Poor little cubs. They were only looking for food. Why MUST they be euthanized? It just doesn’t seem right. We are in their territory, after all,” a Gazette reader wrote online.
Another was more accusing. “Murderers,” the reader wrote.
A few of the more 130 who commented online defended DOW, but not many. Why couldn’t the bears have been tranquilized and set loose in the wilderness away from people or given to a zoo, many asked.
DOW spokesman Michael Sera phin concedes wildlife officials won’t win a popularity contest any time soon, but they aren’t second-guessing themselves, either.
“We don’t like putting bears down,” Seraphin said Friday. “We’re aware there’s resentment. But we can’t manage wildlife based on popular opinion.”
In both instances last week, wildlife officials said they had no choice but to kill the animals because they had shown themselves to be too comfortable around humans, entering houses in search of food as the time nears for them to hibernate.
On Tuesday, two cubs entered a Rockrimmon home while the mother bear prowled outside. All three bears were euthanized.
On Thursday, two cubs entered a home near The Broadmoor hotel while the mother remained outside. Again, DOW euthanized the bears after coaxing them out of the home.
A seventh bear that died last week may have been shot in a tree near the Wildridge Apartments in southwest Colorado Springs or it could have been hit by a car and climbed the tree, where it died afterward, Seraphin said. Black bears’ natural response when scared or hurt is to climb the highest tree they can find.
This year, DOW has killed 10 bears in the Pikes Peak region. Last year, 14 were killed between the spring, when the animals awake from winter hibernation, and the fall, when they fatten up for their months-long sleep.
Once a bear begins associating an effortless meal with people because it’s been fed or can get into trash or has forced its way into a house, there’s no going back, Seraphin said.
“More often than not, when bears start entering homes, history has shown they will continue that behavior,” he said.
Even those who accepted wildlife officials’ assertion that the bears exhibited dangerous behavior, questioned why the animals weren’t given a second chance, the so-called two-strikes rule, or given to a zoo.
In the past, DOW has tranquilized problem bears, tagged them for identification and relocated them away from people after a first offense.
It’s an option wildlife officials still have, but it’s not hard and fast, Seraphin said.
“We can only relocate bears into bear habitat,” he said, noting that if a map of bear habitat in Colorado was laid over a map of where people live, “you’d find they are almost exactly identical.”
Moving them to unpopulated wilderness isn’t viable, Seraphin said. Colorado’s high-country wilderness is not bear habitat. And zoos aren’t interested in more black bears.
