UPDATE from DEC Region 5: “Due to a documented escalation of the bear’s aggressive behavior since 2018, DEC determined the bear was a threat to public safety and humanely euthanized the animal following appropriate protocols.”
By Brandon Loomis
The doomed Adirondack bear who shut down Lake Colden-area camping would not be deterred.
Properly stored camp food didn’t keep him from inspecting every parcel.
Campers’ clapping and shouting couldn’t keep him from poking his nose into and around the tents.
Rubber bullets did not keep him away for long.
“He wouldn’t give up,” backpacker Jordan Meeder, of Perkasie, Pennsylvania, said on the morning of July 4 at the lake’s wooden dam, where other campers gathered to cook away from their tent sites.
On Monday morning the state captured the large male black bear at Marcy Dam and planned to kill it because of its strong conditioning to human foods.
“It’s too aggressive,” New York State Department of Environmental Conservation spokesman David Winchell said.
The Adirondack Explorer was encamped at Colden on the night of July 3, and had a brief personal visit from the bear that evening. At that time a ranger was in pursuit, hazing it by clacking hiking sticks together, and the bear ambled across the Opalescent River, allowing for a fleeting video snippet of its retreat.
Some 20 minutes later, one of three assembled rangers shot the bear with rubber ammunition to haze it away for the core of the camping zone. It took three shots to move the bear downstream. He returned in the morning, methodically inspecting camp after camp and moving along after finding the campers’ required plastic food canisters locked. Rangers said then that they hoped to push it toward Marcy Dam, where Winchell later said the bear wound up in a trap by Monday morning.
Three young men on Saturday described the bear’s visit to their camp the night before, just as they had started eating dinner. The bear walked past them and the food in their hands, and instead examined their tent.
Meeder described a tenser confrontation with the bear on that same evening, when it approached growling and hissing at him and hiking partner Heidi Stevenson, of Souderton, Pennsylvania. They tried to yell and wave it away, but the bear wouldn’t leave until it had sniffed every pack.
“It was a little scary,” Stevenson said, “but also interesting.”
The incident did not deter them from planning to stay another night, their food stored securely away from camp, and they used Colden as a base from which to hike Algonquin Peak on the holiday. DEC then closed the area to camping on Sunday, and announced late Monday afternoon that it was reopening.
The capture comes after a successful raid – by the same bear, Winchell said – on campers’ food at the nearby Calamity Brook lean-to earlier last week.
The state requires campers to use bear-resistant canisters to store food in the Eastern High Peaks Wilderness, which includes Lake Colden. The department released a statement advising campers to be especially careful starting in June, when yearling bears seek out their own territories and may wander through areas where they smell and get hooked on human food sources.
For information about avoiding bear conflicts, visit DEC’s website.
Seriously!? Instead of relocating the bear or giving it a break by keeping the camp ground closed for a while, you’re going to kill the bear to make a few bucks in camping revenue. This is absolutely disgusting. That is his home! Killing him!?! Really? This is infuriating. Just so humans can enjoy the land that isn’t even theirs to begin with. That’s the American way!
I would like to see an update on whether the bear ended up being killed. Relocating an aggressive “problem” bear usually just relocates the problem. According to reports, this bear was large, meaning he wasn’t a youngster with the ability to learn to fear humans. It also means he likely didn’t just drop out of the sky. Why did he turn “bad”, since the incidents seemed to increase rapidly? A bear such as this, after relocation, will simply search out the nearest habitation and continue his quest. He/she may be diseased, starving, or stressed in some other way that it has little choice but to search for easy food. If it is killed, a necropsy often will determine if there were other physical factors involved.
In the words of many a ranger across the country, “a fed bear is a dead bear”. Ultimately, it is up to humans to make sure they are NOT fed – at least by humans.
The Explorer received this confirmation from DEC Region 5: “Due to a documented escalation of the bear’s aggressive behavior since 2018, DEC determined the bear was a threat to public safety and humanely euthanized the animal following appropriate protocols.”
Did they capture the people invading the bears territory?
exactly!
That bear should not be killed. He was living in the area and campers came in, of course he’s curious. Humans go into wildlife territory and the wildlife are killed because they scare them? That is just wrong. We have bears come around my area often. I just had a young black bear in my yard two days ago checking out my bird feeders. They have broken them at times but I don’t mind, they are not after me and they live here too. I’m not going to run out and kill the poor thing. They should keep camps out of bear areas and leave them alone.
Disgusting. The bear was just being a bear. Disgusting.
When will change our ways. We humans should be ashamed of what we are doing to this planet. Shut down hiking in the area don’t kill. Oh wait, we humans are the most important being in this planet. Shame on US!!!!!!
That bear should not have been killed, though Boreas made some interesting points. We were invading its territory and its behavior was not much different than a dog’s.
.
Post signs with images of homo sapiens saying, “WARNING-may fight,drink and shoot with no warning. Hide- till the season is over”.
defund the DEC ! needs to find something better to do than kill hungry bears
Please,The Bear was going to hurt a hiker/camper in the near future. If the bear had shredded a hiker, would that make the people who replied negatively about the DEC putting down a bear happy ? You have to strike a balance between hikers and nature. The bear cannot relearn not to forage in human camps, after he’s found meal after meal. I was hiking this area with a group on 8/10/2020. Their was ample warnings by the DEC that anyone camping in the Lake Colden / Calamity Brook Trail Area to use a double bear resistant canister to store food. Next time the DEC has an issue for two years with an aggressive bear, I’ll recommend they relocate this aggressive bear to your back yard.