Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers euthanized a bear early Saturday that’s believed to have attacked a woman in Manitou Springs and took her cubs to a rehab facility.
The sow charged and knocked the woman down and clawed her back Thursday night. The woman was not seriously injured. The same bear was found to have chased a colleague of the woman’s later in the same block near downtown. A witness told CPW officers that she saw two cubs with the bear.
Neighbors also reported to wildlife officers that the bear and her cubs would go through trash cans in the area and were aggressive to humans, CPW said in a news release.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife worked with U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service agents to catch and kill a bear near Manitou Springs that matched the sow’s description, according to Saturday’s release. They caught it close to where the attack on the woman occurred and are waiting for confirmation from necropsy and testing results.
The officers set up the tracks Friday night, and Cody Wigner, assistant area wildlife manager for the Colorado Springs region, said in the release that they’re confident this was the bear involved in the Thursday attack.
“Early Saturday morning, the APHIS team, using trained hounds, treed a sow matching the description of the target bear and in the same area as the attack,” he said.
The officers also caught the cubs and they were transported to the nonprofit Wet Mountain Wildlife Rehabilitation facility in Wetmore. They’ll be trained to avoid future human contact before they’re re-released into the wild.
CPW said neighbors told them the sow and cubs were going through trash cans in the area and being aggressive to humans after the Thursday attack.
“This is why we say ‘garbage kills bears’ and urge everyone to secure their trash cans,” Wigner said. “This is bear country. We need to keep them wild and not let them become trash bears.”
CPW encourages people to follow its “Bear Aware” tips and camping recommendations to stay safe at cpw.state.co.us.
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