The Alaska Department of Fish and Game shot and killed four black bears this week at Centennial Campground, a campground in East Anchorage where Mayor Dave Bronson’s administration ordered uninsured people to go as it closed Sullivan Arena for use as a mass shelter on last week. In a written statement Wednesday, Fish and Game said the bears it killed Tuesday — a sow and two cubs and another adult male bear — “came into tents to access food and other attractants, including personal hygiene items and garbage”. “Bears entering tents or other structures are a human safety hazard,” Fish and Game said in the statement. “A bear that is considered a threat to public safety or is involved in an attack may be killed by the Department.” Bronson’s administration hastily began directing homeless people to the city’s Centennial Campground in late June with little notice to service providers, area residents and other city officials, just days before Sullivan Arena was closed as a mass homeless shelter on June. 30. More than 150 people have camped there since last week, according to the head of the city’s Parks and Recreation department. Parks and Recreation manages the campground. People the city moved to the campground from Sullivan Arena and other camps, and others who arrived there, initially had little access to bear-safe food storage. Within days of the city’s decision to repurpose the campground, bears were seen on site, rummaging through people’s belongings. The city later provided bear safe containers to the people who lived there. Fish and Game officials had already warned that wilderness areas adjacent to the campground, near Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson and Chugach State Park, are heavily trafficked by bears. In its statement Wednesday, Fish and Game referred to it as “vast areas of bear habitat.” Neighborhoods near the park regularly see human-bear conflicts during the summer, especially bears getting into trash. Fish and Game’s Anchorage biologist Dave Battle in the statement called killing bears “a very temporary solution,” adding that “there will always be more bears in this neighborhood.” “The staff at Centennial Campground is doing their best to manage the campground and minimize the attractions, but there are still a lot of tents with food in them,” Battle said. “Until that changes, more bears will come into the camp and into tents.” That creates an unsafe situation for both the people who live there now and the people who will live there in the future, Battle said. Cynthia Wardlow, the state Division of Wildlife Conservation’s regional supervisor for South Central Alaska, said the state has not confirmed that anyone staying at Centennial Campground has been injured by a bear. He encouraged people to report bear encounters directly to Fish and Game. Wildlife officials use 12-gauge shotguns to shoot the bears, Wardlow said. Sometimes the state can avoid killing the bears, often by placing them out of state, but they couldn’t in this case, he said. “Once placement options are exhausted, we have to euthanize these animals,” Wardlow said. While state wildlife officials have worked with the City of Anchorage and Centennial Campground to get rid of attractive bears there for years, the city had not notified state wildlife officials of the change in conditions at the campground in advance, he said. Wardlow. In an email, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office said the city has now provided 60 food storage containers, 20 32-gallon bear-proof containers “and is doing hourly cleanup efforts to mitigate trash and food.” “We also continue to inspect camps and educate campers about bear safety practices,” said spokesman Corey Allen Young. “The priority will always be to protect people and mitigate risks to bears” Asked if the city is open to liability issues at the East Anchorage campground, Young replied, “No. Just like in the public camps across Alaska and in Anchorage, there are inherent risks to being outside.” Daily News reporter Zachariah Hughes contributed to this report. • • •
