Bear Nears Her End
Problem mother bear is treed in Yosemite Valley and will be killed.

by Mark Grossi and Pablo Lopez
The Fresno Bee - June 14, 2001

Park authorities planned to kill a 250-pound black bear that broke into three vehicles early Wednesday, ran from startled campers and eluded capture by climbing a tree with her two cubs.

By nightfall, the mother bear, named Eenie, and her cubs had made a home about 80 feet up a cedar tree in the Lower Pines Campground of Yosemite Valley.

Rangers will wait until the bears come down on their own and then tranquilize them with a dart gun. The mother bear then will be killed by lethal injection. The cubs will be sent to a state wildlife center.

The bears climbed the tree sometime around 2 a.m. and remained in the tree all day Wednesday in full view of tourists. Some park visitors who saw the bears were upset when they heard the mother bear would be destroyed.
"We feel someone should do something about this," said Robin Houchens, 45, of Southern California, who said she is a wildlife biologist. "Her babies are sucklings. You can hear them crying in the tree. Her only crime is breaking into a car."

But Eenie has been a problem for a few years, park ranger Johanna Lombard said.

She has raided cars, campgrounds and trash bins, looking for food, Lombard said. Rangers have relocated her to far ends of the park, but she keeps coming back and gets into trouble. "A year ago, there was an order signed to euthanize her," Lombard said. "But she is a smart bear, and we haven't been able to catch her."

Eenie’s mother and grandmother also had become accustomed to raiding campgrounds in search of human food. Mother and grandmother were euthanized, Lombard said. "It’s a horrible thing, but we have to euthanize them when they become unnaturally aggressive."

Eenie and her cubs can’t stay in the tree forever. They have no food or water. The cubs, about 4 months old and 20 pounds apiece, are nursing.
"You can see Eenie is thirsty because her tongue is hanging out like a dog’s on a hot summer day," Lombard said.

It’s not Eenie's fault she’s in trouble. "Humans are the problem," Lombard said. They leave food in cars, in tents, in backpacks, where bears can easily get to it.

"We wouldn't have to euthanize bears if visitors stored food in bear boxes or their motel rooms," Lombard said.

In the past, authorities have killed cubs that had learned the behavior from their mothers. But a new program allows them to capture uninitiated cubs and send them to the Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care Center for a year and then return them to the wild.

Park officials plan to turn the two cubs over to the care center after their mother is killed, Lombard said.

Yosemite authorities had to kill five bears last year, four bears in 1999 and three in 1998, officials said. But officials said a vigorous public awareness campaign has greatly reduced bear incidents from 1,590 in 1998 to 654 in 2000.

Eenie would be the first bear to be euthanized this year, Lombard said.
Property damage from the bear incidents in 1998 was $659,009. Last year, the figure dropped to $126,192. This year, the park has had 32 bear incidents and about $9,100 in damage.

But the park’s bear management does not impress Houchens, who said she had been visiting Yosemite for decades.

"I’m leaving Yosemite tonight," she said. "I don’t think I want to come back."