A 74-year-old man managed to fight off a mother black bear and her three cubs after they broke into his Lake City, Colo., home through a partially cracked sliding glass door, authorities say.
The man, who was not named, sustained “significant wounds” in the attack but declined hospital treatment, Colorado Parks and Wildlife stated in a press release.
The four bears were euthanized after the incident. Wildlife authorities say this “tragic” result underscores the need to prevent bear-human interactions as much as possible, for the safety of not just people, but bears too.
“It’s a terrible set of circumstances,” Colorado Parks and Wildlife area manager Brandon Diamond said.
“Clearly, these bears were highly habituated and were willing to enter an occupied house with the residents sitting just feet away. When a bear reaches this level of human habituation, clearly a lot of interaction with people has already happened, and unless communities are working with us collaboratively and communicating issues, we have no opportunity to intervene.”
The attack occurred Oct. 3 around 8:30 p.m. when the residents of the home were shocked to hear a loud crash, followed by the mother bear and her three cubs entering through the sliding glass door.
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The 74-year-old man grabbed a chair from the kitchen and tried to push the mother bear out the door, causing the bear to charge at him. The man was knocked to the ground and the mother bear stood over him and swiped at his head.
The man sustained wounds to his head, neck, both arms, lower abdomen, shoulder and calf from being clawed, authorities said.
“It’s certainly lucky we didn’t have a fatality, because it was close,” wildlife officer Lucas Martin said.
The residents of the home were able to escape the bears by locking themselves in a bedroom. When law enforcement and medical personnel arrived, the three bear cubs were still inside the home.
A deputy with the Hinsdale County Sheriff’s Office was able to scare the cubs out of the home and medical personnel treated the 74-year-old man at the scene.
When wildlife officials arrived at the home they quickly spotted the mother bear and her three cubs in a nearby tree. The four black bears were euthanized and brought to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife lab in Fort Collins to undergo a necropsy and test for any diseases.
The incident represents the first reported bear attack in Colorado this year, compared with six reports last year, authorities say.
Wildlife officials say it’s not uncommon for bears to be in and around Lake City, and officers are aware of social media posts of bears getting into unoccupied homes and garages in the area. Some of those reports were of mother bears, known as sows, with cubs.
“When we have multiple sows with multiple cubs in town and conflict is occurring based on the ongoing availability of human food sources, it creates a very complex situation to mitigate,” Martin said. “Unfortunately, cub bears that are taught these behaviours by their mother may result in generations of conflict between bears and people.”
Officials are urging residents to report all bear incidents so that wildlife officers can step in to mitigate risk before an attack happens.
“Often, people want to get on social media and post about it, but they never actually call the authorities. We don’t only want calls when something escalates to this level. We want to be able to do some management before things get to this level,” Martin said.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife listed some tips to bear-proof one’s home, including keeping garbage well-secured, cleaning garbage cans regularly to free them of food odours, not putting out bird feeders in the summer months, and yelling at bears to scare them off if you spot them in a residential area.
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