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Nevada Department of Wildlife euthanizes bear caught in Stateline

Staff report

STATELINE, Nev. — Nevada Department of Wildlife officers captured a female bear cub near Kingsbury Grade in Stateline early Friday, Aug. 28, and later euthanized it for public safety concerns.

According to Chris Healy, Nevada Department of Wildlife’s public information officer, the bear was identified; it recently broken into two different houses in the Kingsbury area in search of food.

This is the fifth bear Nevada Department of Wildlife euthanized in 2015 and the second in a week. On Tuesday, Aug. 25, a 9-year-old male bear was captured in Incline Village on the North Shore and put down.



“We hate having to do this but a bear entering a house is a dangerous bear and the Nevada Department of Wildlife is obligated to manage the situation,” Healy stated in an Aug. 28 news release. “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.”

Healy said the yearling came from a female bear Nevada Department of Wildlife previously encountered.



Nevada Department of Wildlife euthanized two other cubs from other litters by the same female. Healy said the mother bear, first caught in 2004 and now 19 or 20 years old, taught multiple cubs to rely on garbage and other human-generate food as primary meal sources.

Healy called Friday’s unfortunate euthanization a reminder that people should manage garbage better, especially in the Lake Tahoe Basin.

Healy said he expects Nevada Department of Wildlife to receive negative feedback over the matter, but he stressed the agency has no other option when it comes to nuisance bears.

Nevada Department of Wildlife, he added, has encouraged other agencies in the Lake Tahoe Basin to provide policy for mandatory bear-resistant containers.

The Sierra Sun recently reported that a “six-year-old sow and her cub were trapped Tuesday, Sept. 1, in Crystal Bay along Lake Tahoe’s North Shore.” They will be moved and released since both bears are not considered a threat.

Since 1997, Nevada Department of Wildlife euthanized only 108 bears for public safety concerns. An it reports 188 bears have died in Nevada from traffic collisions, as of 2014. The agency has handled nearly 1,300 overall bears since 1997.


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