EVANSTON — A black bear’s arrival in Evanston last weekend made public safety an urgent priority for Wyoming Game and Fish officials. 

According to new information, Evanston game warden Nick Roberts, first learned about the bear on Thursday, July 13. The bear was found eating from some horses’ grain bins in a rural residence south of Evanston. Although the property owner managed to scare the bear away twice, it kept returning. 

Green River Region Wildlife Supervisor Todd Graham told the Herald that Roberts was unable to find the bear the first time it was reported, and after the property owner scared the bear away the second time, it went across the highway to find trash. Graham said Roberts was then able to locate it and scared the bear away again, trying to frighten it enough that it would leave the area and seek out better ways to find food. 

It seemed like it could have worked, as Roberts didn’t hear anything more about the bear throughout the day on Saturday, July 15. However, that evening, dispatch received a flurry of calls from Evanston residents about a bear wandering the Aspen Grove subdivision. 

Because the bear was unafraid of humans and was clearly heading even further into town as it looked for food (including in garbage cans), Roberts and two Uinta County Sheriff deputies put it down in the Gusher Valley townhouse area on Sioux Drive, according to the July 19 WGFD news release.

Graham estimated it has been at least 20 years since a bear was last seen in Evanston proper.

In the aftermath of the incident, several people have wondered why the bear wasn’t simply relocated.

Graham said that WGFD normally tries to trap bears, especially because it can be hard to get close enough to tranquilize them, but the game warden only had two days of warning before the bear became a more immediate threat.

“Once you get into an urban environment, ... [trapping a bear] is really hard to do — and dangerous to do — because of people’s kids and pets and various things,” he said. “You get much more limited with your options when you’re dealing with a bear right in town like that.”

He added that if the bear had remained where it was first spotted, officials might have had the time to trap it and move it somewhere else, but instead of moving away from people, it headed into town. 

In fact, by the time it was euthanized, the bear was a short distance away from intersection near Uinta Meadows Elementary, which not only has an elementary school down the street (and a high population of families with small children) but has a nearby grocery store, a gas station, a liquor store, baseball fields and all four secondary schools.

Graham also said that relocation to the Uintas was unfeasible for other reasons, including the fact that taking a bear already acclimated to humans and ready food sources simply becomes a problem elsewhere. 

“There’s not a lot of mountainous bear-type habitat in Wyoming,” he said. “... in the Uintas, we have had some problem bears there in the past, and just don’t feel that’s a good place to take a problem bear.” 

He also said that WGFD does not relocate bears to other states, and the Uinta Mountains visible from Evanston are in Utah. 

Furthermore, bears that are used to humans often become more aggressive and daring around people, to the point of seeking food anywhere they sense it. 

“They tend to try to get into places like houses, where they wouldn’t a lot of times,” Graham said. “It’s happened — not in Wyoming [that] I’m aware of — when they go into houses actually when people are home.” 

“Like any wild animal, if they get cornered and get scared, they can become very dangerous,” he continued. “... We just feel that human safety has to be our first concern, a priority. We don’t want anything to happen.” 

There has also been a rash of black bear attacks elsewhere in the United States this year, especially in Alaska and Colorado. Two people died in mid-June in Alaska when they were attacked by predatory black bears.

Graham said he doesn’t think anyone was deliberately feeding the bear that was in Evanston, but bears coming into town are so rare that people aren’t used to keeping trash bins bear-proof, or securing other wildlife attractants like food for humans, pets, livestock and even birds.