For the second time in a week, The Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW) has been forced to euthanize a dangerous black bear near Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Wild life officials report that both bears were deemed a threat to public safety, reports CBS News.
Chris Healy, spokesman for NDOW, indicated that officials caught an 18-month-old female black bear late Thursday or early Friday in the Kingsbury area on the lake’s South Shore.
Healy said in a statement that the bear matched the description of the one that recently entered two different homes in the Kingsbury area in search of food. The female bear was previously captured in the same area when she was a cub before she grew up and became a repeat offender, according to SFGate.
While the wildlife officials don’t like having to kill the animals, a bear that enters houses is considered dangerous and NDOW is obligated to maintain public safety. Healy says that there were requests from people to simply move the bear, and save her life, “but we cannot move a bear that we know to be dangerous, that just would not be prudent.”
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.
This was the fifth bear to be euthanized by the NDOW in 2015 for public safety concerns, and the second in only a week. On Tuesday August 25, a 9-year-old, 450-pound male black bear was captured on the lake’s north shore near Incline Village and later put down.
NDOW has killed 108 bears that were deemed public safety threats or nuisances since 1997
Healy states that Friday’s incident is a reminder to residents in the Lake Tahoe area to manage their garbage disposal better.
Earlier this year, a protective mama bear chased a group of frightened tourists through Yellowstone National Park when she deemed they were too close to her cubs.
