A 300-pound brown bear sighted in at least two Fairview backyards July 24 entertained residents for hours before being killed. The bear died after being shot by a tranquilizer dart and falling 30 feet from a tree branch.
At least 15 spectators and almost as many Española and State Police officers spent the late afternoon gawking at the startled animal, which had been searching for apples in a nearby ditch and later clambered up a tree.
“You can put in the paper, that Animal Control can’t handle that one — it’s too big,” Española animal control officer Evaristo Lopez said, adding the biggest pests he’s wrangled before have been raccoons and the occasional coyote.
The bear was first spotted around 3:45 p.m. by a landscaping crew packing up their equipment in the backyard of Manny Chavez and Adrianna Vigil’s home on the corner of Fairview Lane and El Llano Road, CL Landscaping owner Cory Lewis said.
“My foreman came to load the Bobcat on the trailer when he heard something huffing and puffing, and the bear was right there splashing around in the ditch,” Lewis said.
After sighting the bear, the crew ran to safety inside a truck until police arrived, they said.
“I thought at first it was a dog in the water, so I went to go see, ‘cause maybe it was injured,” foreman Joe Medrano said. “When I realized it was a bear, I freaked out and we got in the truck and called 911.”
Upon sighting Medrano, the bear ran up the tree, where it remained until state Game and Fish officer Desi Ortiz shot it with a tranquilizer dart.
Authorities planned to sedate the bear and attempt to lower it from the tree with a rope or harness. Instead, the dart startled the bear, which scampered wildly up and down tree branches until it fell, unconscious, about 30 feet to the ground below. The bear was lifted with a front-loader onto Lopez’s animal control truck for transport to a wildlife release area in northern Rio Arriba County, but died shortly afterward from the impact.
Lopez was seen showing off the dead animal around Española later that day, Española Police Sgt. Christian Lopez said.
Department spokesman Marty Frentzel said officers often sell dead wildlife, which is considered state property. Frentzel said Evaristo Lopez may have bought the bear or offered to dispose of it, but could not confirm which. Lopez is currently facing criminal charges related to a separate matter and did not return calls for comment.
Ortiz said he had caught the same bear in Santa Fe three days earlier and released it in the Jemez Mountains. An Española resident had sighted it around 6 a.m. the morning it was caught the second time.
The Department had not responded to a bear incident near Española city limits since last summer, when Ortiz trapped a black bear in La Mesilla. Ortiz said bears roam near and within city limits “probably all the time,” especially during the summer and fall while searching for apples, but rarely wind up in confrontations with people.
“I’d be happy to let him be, and usually I would just do that, except there’s so much people around,” he said.
Frentzel said officers tag bears when they are caught near populated areas, and generally kill a bear upon catching it three times. For more information on what to do if a bear comes onto your property, see this story at www.riograndesun.com.