A brown bear has been killed by Wildlife Troopers and Forest Service personnel after a run-in with a group of Alaska Crossings campers just north of Berg Bay, across the narrows on the mainland near Wrangell.
According to information provided by Public Information Officer Ken Marsh, with the Alaska State Troopers, the encounter occurred on Sunday, May 26, around 3 a.m. A brown bear wandered into the Crossings camp and began rummaging through the group's food. The group had a bear fence, according to Martin Hutton, acting district ranger for the Forest Service, but the bear was able to get through it.
"The bear then dragged one of the guides out from under his tarp until he started yelling at it," Ashton said in an email. "The bear stopped and the guide was uninjured."
Hutton said that the guide's screaming scared the bear away temporarily, but it returned. The group then used a flare to scare it away a second time, but once again it returned. According to a press release from SEARHC, which has Alaska Crossings as part of their care network, the group kept the bear a safe distance from the campsite until after 5 a.m. By then, the group had packed up and left for a different campsite. Hutton reiterated that nobody was hurt by the bear, save for a few pounds of cheese and lunch meat.
"Alaska Crossings is a wilderness based program operating in bear habitat," said Steve Helgeson, SEARHC Senior Manager of Adolescent Programs, in their press release. "It's not unusual to be in close proximity to bears, however, it's unusual to have a significant bear encounter like this."
The group contacted the authorities soon after the run-in. Wildlife Troopers and law enforcement from Petersburg met with the Wrangell Forest Service and the local Wildlife Trooper to look for the bear around Moose Creek, and found it was still in the area.
"A bear was located on the beach at the camp which matched the description given by the group," Marsh's email read. "The bear was downwind of the officers for more than 30 minutes as they approached the site on foot and never appeared to be alarmed by their presence."
The bear was killed, and its body was brought back for autopsy. It was a juvenile bear, he said, and Hutton said they wanted to check its stomach for blocks of cheese or food wrappers to confirm it was the same bear. While they did not find this evidence, he said he is highly confident it was the same bear.
Jerrie Dee Harvey, Alaska Crossings' program manager, said that they are still looking into all of what happened on Sunday, but that she is very thankful nobody was hurt.
"We just had a curious bear go through some gear," she said. "No injury, no nothing."
Petersburg Wildlife Trooper Cody Litster said that it was impossible to be completely sure, but they are "95 percent sure" it was the right bear. He also emphasized that this was not a hunting trip, but an investigation. They did not set out planning to shoot the bear on sight, if scaring it away was an option. The bear was habituated to humans, however, and Litster said that as it did not show any fear of being near people it was a danger. Killing it was unfortunate but necessary.
Hutton and Litster both took the opportunity to remind everyone to be "bear-aware" when out in the woods. Brown bears are fairly common in Alaska. According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, 70 percent of all brown bears in North America live in the state, ranging from the Arctic to Southeast.
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