During one burst of activity last month, the animal treed a fleeing man and stalked trail users in the park, trotting behind as they skied away.
"We don't like it when black bears follow and chase people," said Rick Sinnott, Anchorage biologist for Fish and Game. "So my plan is to shoot him if I can find him."
The bear's most recent appearance came Wednesday evening at the upper Huffman home of Anchorage police Lt. Dave Parker. The animal ambled up to a porch outside the bedroom and came nose-to-nose with Parker's wife, who caught a photo of the early riser nuzzling an empty case of Budweiser Select.
"He's a pretty surly boar," Parker said. "He's obviously accustomed to people."
Last summer, Anchorage saw a rash of human-bear encounters, including two serious brown bear maulings in Bicentennial Park. Now, after a short winter lull, things are off to an early start. April is usually when bears begin stirring, but this black bear, described as an adult male, appears to have been up since early March, Sinnott said.
Reports of a black bear rooting through garbage and feasting on birdseed have come in from neighborhoods on just about every corner of the park, he said.
On March 21, the bear treed an Anchorage man on the Basher Trail near Campbell Airstrip. The man told authorities he was forced to climb to escape the animal, that he got the attention of people walking with dogs, and the dogs chased the bear away.
Alaska Wildlife Troopers found fresh bear tracks and hair but were unable to locate the animal.
In the days following, a bear that Sinnott assumes is the same one chased skiers on two occasions in Bicentennial Park, each time popping up behind the people and trotting toward them as they skied away. One person was pursued for about 10 minutes as he skied to avoid the bear, Sinnott said.
"You never know. Sometimes bears are curious," he said. "But when they're doing that for 10 minutes, that's more than just a little bit of curiosity."
When he got word of the chases, Sinnott headed out to the area and patrolled in the mornings and evenings for a few days, finding some fresh tracks but no bear. He said he doesn't plan to patrol for the bear, but will wait for someone to call it in.
Relocating the bear isn't an option because that isn't generally effective, Sinnott said. Bears often don't survive and, if they don't come back, they just cause the problems elsewhere, he said.
"The biggest problem with moving bears out of Anchorage is neither the Kenai, the Mat-Su Valley nor the area across Knik Arm from us wants any of our bears," Sinnott said. "They're chock full of their own bears and they have their own bear problems."
Find James Halpin online at adn.com/contact/jhalpin or call him at 257-4589.
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