Mother bear euthanized near Los Angeles despite neighbors pushing for relocation

Officials in California euthanized a mother bear this week after it committed its second attack on a person in less than a year.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife captured the mother bear and two cubs last Sunday, and she was put down Tuesday, officials in Monrovia, 15 miles northeast of Los Angeles, said.

The mother bear, who had been living under a nearby home, approached a woman out walking her dog on Saturday, swiping at her before a neighbor came out and helped scare the bear off, Monrovia city officials said. 

The Monrovia Police Department said that after the attack, the woman was transported to a hospital and treated for nonserious injuries, according to KCBS-TV. 

“The woman, the dog and the bear were all kind of facing each other. She was screaming, the dog was barking its head off, and the bear was just kind of holding its ground,” Jim, another neighbor and witness who did not provide a surname, told KTLA-TV.

The mother bear’s cubs were not present for Tuesday’s attack, but were instead holed up safely in a den underneath the nearby home, Monrovia city officials said. 

The locals, who had seen the black bear out and about since she gave birth, had named her Blondie, according to KTLA-TV.

Monrovia city officials said Blondie was also involved in an attack on an elderly man in the same neighborhood last June.

At the time, state wildlife personnel couldn’t capture Blondie, and the elderly man recovered from his injuries.

Monrovia city officials said that, though they lobbied for all three bears to be released into the nearby Angeles National Forest, state wildlife officials determined that a bear that injured two people needed to be killed.

“Relocation may seem like a solution, but is not an option when it could put public safety at risk. Bears have strong spatial memory and often return to familiar areas. When translocated long distances, they recreate the same conflict behavior or struggle to survive in unfamiliar habitat,” the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said, according to The New York Times.

The two cubs will be moved to a facility and eventually be released into the wild, city officials said.