Recent Minneapolis bear sighting is part of larger trend, experts say
A bear was euthanized after it was spotted wandering in a north Minneapolis neighborhood on Sunday, and it’s part of a larger trend of more bear sightings in the area, officials said.
The Minneapolis Police Department responded on Sunday to reports of a bear sighting near Girard Avenue North and 14 Avenue North at 8:40 a.m. Officers reportedly saw the black bear with a potentially injured front paw and followed the bear as it moved through the densely populated neighborhood using a drone.
Personnel from the Minneapolis Park Police and the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office monitored the bear’s location. Field agents from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) were then called to euthanize the animal a little after 11 a.m. near 22nd Avenue North and Girard Avenue North.
The DNR issued a statement, noting that the bear was in a heavily populated residential area with children and presented a public safety threat. The euthanized bear was salvaged for meat and donated to a family in need.
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More frequent sightings
Researchers are seeing more bear sightings around the metro area within the last 15 years. Andrew Tri, bear project leader for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources based in Grand Rapids, Minn., said that it’s hard to know exactly where the animals are traveling from, but there are more regular sightings in the northern part of the metro near Anoka, Washington and Chisago counties.
“Thirty years ago, this would’ve been unheard of aside from one occasional bear wandering through the cities,” Tri said. “There’s a bear living right now in Maple Grove that’s had at least her second litter of cubs that has been documented. So, we have bears living kind of on the doorstep of the Twin Cities.”
The bears that come are usually young and male, Tri said. They often settle in during the spring as they do statewide, sometimes looking for a seasonal place to find food, and some inadvertently end up in the denser part of the Twin Cities metro each year. Most of the bears find a way out of the area.
The DNR said while bears are not inherently dangerous, they are still large animals that can hurt humans. Generally, bears are euthanized and not relocated if they’re considered a public safety threat within a densely populated neighborhood, making it hard to trap.
Tri said that the DNR doesn’t tranquilize bears for multiple reasons in these situations. For example, if they tried darting the bear on the ground in the urban setting, it might run into traffic or come close to people and swat or snap at them. Pets might be in danger, as tranquilizers can take up to 15 minutes to be in effect.
“There’s a lot of things that can go wrong,” he said. “If there’s a bear up a tree and the drugs take effect, you can have issues of having the bear falling asleep in the tree, falling out of the tree hitting branches or hitting the pavement, and it’s really difficult and sometimes hazardous to catch a bear coming out of a tree. So, for that reason, enforcement officers deemed it a public safety threat, and that’s why the bear was euthanized.”
‘Bears are here to stay’
Human-bear interactions don’t have to be negative, Tri said. Bears are recolonizing areas where they haven’t been in over a century. For example, more than a week ago, a bear was spotted in Northfield where the animal hadn’t been seen in a long time.
Examples include places like Bemidji, Duluth and Brainerd, where Tri added bears were known to be living in town for “between 50 to 60 years.”
“That’s kind of a cool thing from an ecological perspective,” he said. “There are lots of cities and areas that can coexist with bears and do it quite well and people just learn to live with it. Bears in the metro is just kind of a new thing and it’ll take some time for people to get used to it. I’m not overly concerned about widespread rashes of really intense human-bear conflict.”
The best thing that residents can do is to make sure there aren’t attractants for bears such as bird feeders and open trash cans. Tri said it is important to leash smaller dogs and pets and keep pet food off the porch. If someone encounters a bear, Tri recommends making a lot of noise to scare them off.
Otherwise, Tri said it’s possible to coexist with bears as long as they’re respected. Most of the time, they’ll choose to ignore interacting with humans.
“Bears near the metro is something that has been more common over the last 10-15 years or so,” Tri said. “These bears are here to stay. It’s kind of a cool thing watching these bears live right next to humans without really any sort of conflicts.”