A band of yearling grizzly clubs were shot and killed by an area biologist for terrorizing residents, breaking into homes and killing livestock near the Alaska town of Healy, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported Saturday.
The cubs met their end on Friday near Lignite Road. The siblings and their mother, who managed to escape human penance thus far, are accused of general mayhem in the Healy area. Biologists are still on the hunt for mama bear.
Cathie Harms, spokeswoman for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, told the News-Miner that "the danger level is escalating" around Healy, a coal mining town south of Fairbanks, the second-largest city in Alaska.
Harms and other area biologists admit that rehabilitating bears that have come in contact with humans and learned to associate them with food is nearly impossible. They feel there is no other choice than to put the offending animals down. In the mean time, according to the News-Miner, Harms advises Healy residents to watch for the aggressive sow and keep "each other alert through phone lines and Facebook postings."
In an unrelated coincidence, the News-Miner reports, that "an old male" grizzly was killed Friday after stumbling into an area warehouse occupied by Usibelli Coal Mine workers.
He was "in very poor condition, with many parasites (worms), and three legs," Harms told the News-Miner. He "had entered the building, with workers — not what normal bears do — and was taken, in a justified case of defense of life and property."
For much much more on the crazy bears around Healy, read the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner's story.