Histoires d'ours...

[Animal 0]

May 23, 2005. 08:44 AM


RICHARD LAUTENS/TORONTO STAR
This black bear led officials on a chase yesterday before climbing this tree
in a Kathryn Cres. backyard and succumbing to a tranquilizer.

Bear heads south for weekend
Wayward bruin will be returned to wild after 12-hour chase through downtown


BOB MITCHELL AND HILDA HOY
STAFF REPORTERS

In the end he fell asleep.

But not before the teenage black bear led heavily armed police, natural
resources ministry officers, even York Region's own police chief on a
12-hour catch-me-if-you can romp through downtown Newmarket.

Just before 7:30 last night, the bear, fast asleep after being hit with at
least three tranquilizing darts over several hours, was finally lowered head
first down the trunk of a tall evergreen in the backyard of a home on
Kathryn Cres.

There were smiles all around and a look of relief on everyone's face.
Earlier it looked as if the bear might tumble out of the tree and on-lookers
hoped it wouldn't get injured in the fall.

"Must be a really slow news day," said York Police Chief Armand La Barge as
he looked at the large gathering of media camped on the residential street.

La Barge was among the half dozen officers holding the tarp used to catch
the bear as two natural resources ministry officers lowered the animal down
the tree.

"He'll be taken away and released in the wild," said La Barge. "The intent
right from the beginning was to make sure this bear survived. The idea was
to hit it with tranquilizers and then wait until it fell asleep.
"Sightings of bears in Newmarket isn't that unusual but what happened with
this one is quite rare. Usually they just wander away and don't decide to
take a jaunt through downtown."

The bear had climbed up the tree about 3:30 p.m. and remained there for four
hours.

Borrowing a ladder from a neighbour, several ministry officials climbed as
high as they could, and twice poked it with a long stick. But instead of
coming down, the bear simply climbed higher.

On the street, dozens of people gathered, while many others watched the
incident unfold on television throughout the day as live-eye TV crews
reported the bear's antics.

"It's given people a little excitement," said James Dunn, who lives next
door to the yard where the bear was finally apprehended. "We didn't make it
up to Muskoka this weekend, so this has livened things up a bit. It brought
all the neighbours together."

"You don't expect to see this every day here," said resident Alice Sheridan,
85, and a former deer hunter.
"This is a town not a bush. You kind of expect these things in the middle of
a forest."

Sheridan said even though she was shocked to see the bear in her
neighbourhood, she wasn't totally surprised.

"When they stopped the spring bear hunt, you knew they were bound to come
south once all their food ran out," she said.
The day began when a man called York police about 8:30 a.m. and reported
seeing a bear digging through garbage in the backyard of his home more than
3 kilometres away from where the bear finally was captured.

For several hours, armed officers stood guard as natural resources ministry
officers searched for the animal in a wooded area of Fairy Lake Park.
Overhead, a York police helicopter scanned the dense bush with infrared
cameras.

"It's likely pretty scared," said John Almond, a fish and wildlife technical
specialist with the natural resources ministry. "Black bears aren't very
aggressive. This bear was probably pretty excited and just wanted to find a
way out of here."
Almond said there were never any plans to shoot and kill the bear.

"We always intended to try and get it to go up a tree so we could immobilize
it," Almond said. "This is a young bear that may have been kicked out by its
mother and is looking for some place else to call home or it just wandered
into town because it smelled something good and got confused."
Ministry officials never expected the bear would make a run for it by
mid-afternoon. It dashed across the top of a wooded incline in the south end
of the park, about 10 metres from where a throng of news media had gathered.

It then dove into the Holland River, swimming five metres to land, where it
crossed a street, scampered through a baseball field and then up a hill and
through a fence where it came face to face with a large German shepherd.

But instead of turning back, the bear darted through the backyard and across
Roywood Cres., eventually stopping in the backyard on Kathryn Cres. where it
climbed a tree and remained perched about 15 metres up.

"Our concern initially was that this bear was in Fairy Lake Park, which is a
very popular place, especially on a long weekend," La Barge said.

"But then it ran and we ended up getting all kinds of calls from the public
about this bear running through backyards and down streets."

Yesterday's incident follows a similar confrontation late last week in
Peterborough with a less-happy ending.

On Friday, city police shot and killed a 325-pound three-legged bear that
had attempted to enter a house.
And yesterday in Scarborough, a confused deer crashed through the window of
a fitness centre. Toronto Animal Services tranquilized the animal and
transported it to the city zoo for examination. But the injuries were too
severe and the animal was euthanized, police said.

WITH FILES FROM AMY BROWN-BOWERS
__________
May 22, 2005. 09:01 PM

Police capture bear in Newmarket park

FROM CANADIAN PRESS

A bear that wandered into Newmarket was captured this evening after leading
police on a daylong chase through urban parkland.
“He’s on his way up north,” a York Regional Police spokesman said this
evening.

Police and Ministry of Natural Resources workers cornered the wandering
black bear in a tree in this afternoon.

It was tranquillized and lowered out of the tree, then loaded on a truck to
be taken to more bear-friendly territory than downtown Newmarket.

Police said they didn’t know where Ministry of Natural Resources workers
planned to take the bear for release back into the wild.

The bear was spotted wandering through this town of 72,000 by residents this
morning.

Police originally believed they were dealing with a black bear cub. But they
said the animal turned out to be an adult black bear, two-metres tall when
standing on two legs.

Heavily armed officers, backed up by a police helicopter, tracked the bear
through the area until it climbed a tree.

“We don’t know how he got here,” the police spokesman said. “Maybe he snuck
in under cover of darkness following some raccoons.”