State investigating after black bear shot and killed in Newtown
State wildlife authorities are investigating the fatal shooting Thursday of a female black bear in Newtown, which left two cubs without a mother, local and state officials said Friday.
State Environmental Conservation Police (Encon) are investigating the shooting, Department of Energy and Environmental Protection spokesman Will Healey said. Working with local officials, DEEP wildlife biologists and Encon officers are watching the surviving bear cubs and assessing their health, Healey said.
Although the Humane Society, the town’s first selectman and others have called for the cubs to be taken to a wildlife rehabilitation organization, state officials are allowing the cubs to remain in the area as it is their home range and their familiarity with the area will increase their chance of success, Healey said.
“We urge people to avoid feeding the bear cubs, and to give them space to continue learning to forage for natural food sources, free from human interference,” he said. “Human interaction or feeding the cubs can greatly reduce their chance of survival and will also diminish their natural fear of people, creating potential future danger for the bears and public safety.”
DEEP officials ask any witnesses to the shooting to call 860-424-3011.
Multiple social media posts identified the dead animal as Bobbi, a well-known bear in Newtown. Two Facebook pages have been launched — Bobbi the Bear #217 and Save Bobbi’s Cubs.
Town First Selectman Dan
Rosenthal said he was “heartbroken over the loss of the bear and the orphaning of the cubs.” While he could not comment on the active investigation, Rosenthal said he was lobbying DEEP to get the cubs to a wildlife rescue and rehabilitation organization.
It is illegal to hunt or trap bears in Connecticut, but a person may kill a bear in self-defense. State law also allows the killing of a bear deemed to be a public health or safety threat, and farmers or farm workers may pursue, trap, and kill a bear that damages property on land used for agriculture.
Black bear attacks on humans are rare. In June 2017, a woman walking her dog in a Simsbury park encountered a bear that “took a swipe at her” and left her with minor scratches on her legs. State wildlife officials found and killed the bear. Two bears were shot in September 2015 after one of them stalked a woman hiking in Burlington’s Sessions Woods and touched her leg with his nose.
In 2017, a 557-pound male black bear was shot and killed in Kent as he headed for a barn where a bear had killed a miniature donkey two weeks earlier. State officials concluded the shooting was justified to protect other animals in the barn.
Overall, however, many more bears in Connecticut have been killed by motor vehicles.
“The tragic and brutal killing of this mother black bear, leaving her orphaned cubs stranded, was preventable and unnecessary,” Annie Hornish, Connecticut’s director of the Humane Society of the United States, said.
“If they survive, which they cannot do on their own at this age, these cubs will suffer this trauma for the rest of their lives.”
Asked if she knew how the shooting happened, Hornish said, “We are trying to get information and confirmation of what happened and understand that this horrific case is currently under investigation. We implore DEEP to do the right thing and help get these cubs to a rehabilitator, as they won’t survive on their own at their young age without their mother.”
Hornish listed solutions to prevent conflicts with bears, including installing electric fencing around chicken coops, using bear-resistant trash cans, making sure all pet and livestock foods are unavailable to bears and taking down bird feeders until the winter.
“Bears need humans to behave, so that bears are not killed from entirely preventable circumstances,” she said. “Killing is never the solution because it is a never-ending cycle of death.”
The state’s bear population, estimated at about 1,200, is growing and the bears’ range is expanding. Many bears are reported in Litchfield and Hartford counties and fewer in eastern Connecticut, but the big omnivores have spread across the state.
Connecticut is good bear country. Natural foods such as acorns, skunk cabbage and grubs are abundant and bears’ reproductive success and the survivorship of cubs are both high.
Anyone who observes a black bear in Connecticut is encouraged to report the sighting at portal.ct.gov/.../wild.../reporta-wildlife-sighting or send an email to deep.wildlife@ct.gov.