Four black bears that repeatedly entered a homeless campground in Anchorage, Alaska, and rummaged through tents looking for scraps of food and trash were killed Tuesday because authorities said they posed a “human safety risk.” .
A city spokesman said Wednesday that no one was injured in the bears, which were killed by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
The bears — a sow with two cubs and another adult — were eating food from tents at Centennial Campground, which is near a state park in southern Alaska and is managed by city officials, according to a statement from the Department of Fish and Game. The area is also home to “vast areas of bear habitat,” the department said.
The city, which is the state’s largest with about 288,000 residents, told homeless people to move to Centennial Campground after it closed its largest homeless shelter on June 30, according to The Anchorage Daily News. About 210 homeless people are staying at Centennial Campground, a city spokesman said.
The decision to move homeless people to a new area has raised concerns among some government officials and people in the community. State Sen. Bill Wilechowski, a Democrat, said in a June 24 letter to Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson that turning the park into a homeless encampment “would create an unsafe environment for both campers and nearby residents.” (His letter, however, did not mention bear threats as a safety risk.)
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The killing of the bears raised questions in the community about the safety of the hundreds of homeless people living at the campground.
Corey A. Young, a spokesman for Mr. Bronson, said in a statement that officials “continue to inspect campgrounds and educate campers about bear safety practices.” He added that private security personnel were already in place but would now be working around the clock.
“As many longtime Alaskans can attest, bears don’t just go to campgrounds,” he said. “In the summer, it’s common to see them all over the city in many neighborhoods. The priority will always be to protect people and reduce risks to bears.
The uproar over the encampment comes as cities across the country continue to grapple with homelessness on their streets and parks, a problem exacerbated by the pandemic. Homelessness in the United States increased by 2.2. percent in 2020 from the previous year, according to an annual national survey by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that was completed before the pandemic.
In 2021, a follow-up report by the agency found that there were more than 326,000 homeless people in the country, an 8 percent decrease from 2020, although the agency warned that homelessness remained an “urgent crisis.” In Alaska, about 2,000 people were homeless as of January 2020, up from about 1,900 the previous year.
The Department of Fish and Game said in a statement that keeping bears away from people’s food “is the most important part of preventing conflict and reducing bear-human confrontations.”
Because bears are “creatures of habit,” they look for the same food spots every year, the department said.
Dave Battle, the department’s Anchorage area biologist, said in a statement Wednesday that there were “a lot of tents still with food in them” at the campground.
“Until that changes, more bears are going to come into camp and get into tents,” he said. “It’s a safety issue for both the people who stay there now and anyone who stays there after.”
Mr Young said staff had brought in 60 bear-proof food storage containers and 20 bear-proof 32-gallon containers and were cleaning the site every hour.
Bear attacks in Alaska remain rare. Ten people died in bear attacks in Alaska from 2000 to 2017, according to a study by the state health department’s epidemiology division, and 68 people were hospitalized for injuries from such attacks.
But bear attacks appear to be increasing globally due to habitat overlap resulting from human population growth and outdoor recreation, according to the study.
Mr. Battle described killing bears as “a very temporary solution,” especially at Centennial Campground.
“There’s always going to be more bears in that vicinity because of its location,” he said. “And we can’t teach bears not to eat what they find.”
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