A black bear, who is surprisingly stealth for his large size, has managed to evade capture for years, so wildlife officials need your help.
State Department of Fish and Wildlife teams captured and put GPS collars on this bear near Tiger Mountain twice, first in 2018 and then again in 2019.
They tracked him to Squak Mountain and then in 2019 began receiving reports of a bear getting into garbage cans and bird feeders near Issaquah, and gaining a lot of weight as a result. It’s mainly a guess, but based on reports, DFW officials estimate he’s more than 300 pounds.
DFW’s Chase Gunnell says the collar battery died as expected after close to two years, so they can’t track him, but it’s also designed to fall off, only it hasn’t done that yet. So, now there’s concern because some of the people who’ve spotted him say he’s too big, and the collar is clearly too tight. “We have heard, based on those reports, is that he is abnormally large,” Gunnell says, “and that’s almost certainly from feeding on non-natural food sources – garbage, bird feeders, other sources that we really don’t want these bears feeding on. It helps habituate them to humans; it can prevent the potential for conflicts.”
Gunnell says for more than two years they’ve tried to catch the bear with culvert traps, which are a piece of culvert pipe with bait and a gate that drops when the bear goes inside, and motion-sensor cameras – but to no avail – so DFW needs those bear sighting reports.
They also need you to remember ALL of Washington is bear country, so they encourage the use of bear-proof trash cans with locking lids so they can’t get in them or at least not leaving out garbage or other food that attracts them. They encourage you at least to wait until the morning of your trash pick-up to put out your cans so it gives bears less time to forage.
