Bear family death: What really happened in Old Forge 

Six months after a state encon officer shot a mother bear and her two cubs in Old Forge, community members try to make sense of the killing

By Gwendolyn Craig

On an August day last year, two black bear cubs scrambled up a tree behind Old Forge Hardware in the town of Webb as a state environmental conservation officer shot their mother dead. One cub climbed back down the tree and the officer killed it, too. He grazed the second cub, but it fled back up into the boughs. The officer waited an hour and a half before he could safely take the final shots.

“I watched the whole thing,” said Webb Supervisor Bonnie Baker. “I watched baby bears screaming in trees.”

These last excruciating hours of the bear trio known to frequent the hamlet of Old Forge were detailed in an incident report the Explorer received in early January from a Freedom of Information Law request placed in October. 

The state Department of Environmental Conservation, which released the redacted records, stood by its decision to euthanize the bears, noting an escalating aggressiveness they showed toward humans. 

But last summer’s public euthanization of the well-known animals led a number of people to ask whether the response was necessary, and what can be done to prevent such killing in the future. It’s something both the DEC and the town of Webb are working on for this upcoming tourist season, as bears are commonplace visitors there.

Records

In the last eight years, the DEC euthanized 76 black bears in the Adirondack Park region, 194 statewide, due to bear-human conflicts and dispatch for diseases and injury. 

In the Adirondack Park, Hamilton and Herkimer counties saw the most black bear euthanizations in that time frame due to bear-human conflicts, 25 and 22 respectively. Old Forge is in Herkimer County.

The DEC uses a statewide Black Bear Response Manual as its technical guide, which in part classifies black bears and whether they are a risk to humans. A Class 1 bear is deemed a risk to humans and may be euthanized.

Many of these euthanizations do not make headlines, but residents and local officials watched the Old Forge bear trio stalked by visitors for photo opportunities. They watched them, and in some cases tried to protect them from encroaching crowds. And then the bears were killed downtown in view of spectators. 

The shockwave caused the town to hold public meetings and consider a local law imposing hefty fines for feeding and harassing wildlife. 

To learn more about why the DEC determined the Old Forge bears should be killed, the Explorer filed a Freedom of Information Law request on Oct. 15 for any reports and communications of the incident. At first, the department said no such records existed.

The DEC later reopened the request and in January provided 40 pages, including the euthanization incident report. Some of the records were redacted, including the names of the officer and DEC officials. The DEC cited “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,” “inter-agency or intra-agency materials” and “could endanger the life or safety of any person if disclosed,” as reasons for withholding certain information.

The DEC upheld the redactions in an appeal.

In addition to the incident report, the records show a handful of calls about the three bears leading up to Aug. 11. They range from accounts of the bears roaming the village, to the mother bluff charging people attempting to take photos of them at the local waste transfer station. None of the reports listed the bears as Class 1.

But the DEC said that on Aug. 9, after receiving multiple reports from the public, staff determined the sow to be a Class 1. In follow-up interviews with the Explorer, DEC officials said the cubs were also considered Class 1.

Baker called the euthanizations “disheartening.” Just days prior, she had spent hours keeping people away from a tree they had climbed.

The fate of the bears was a decision the DEC had to make, she said. Baker didn’t have an opinion on whether it was right or wrong, but some have questioned whether the killings of the two cubs was warranted. 

Multiple people contacted the DEC shortly after Aug. 11, asking for its justification, records show. DEC officials scheduled phone calls with them.

One member of the public asked why the DEC did not work with rehabilitators to save the cubs. That has been one of Mike Farmer’s questions, too. Farmer is the tourism director for the Town of Webb, which includes the hamlet of Old Forge.

“It’s our obligation to all wildlife, in this case in particular, to do what we can to preserve that wildlife, and I didn’t see that that was done,” Farmer said.

Baker is particularly frustrated by the people who crowded the bears for photos and hopes the town can pass a local law bolstering what the state already has in place against illegally feeding and harassing wildlife. State law notes a written warning for a first offense. A second offense could come with an up to $250 fine and up to 15 days in jail.

The town is considering heftier fines, a minimum of $1,000, for such human behavior. Baker expects the town board to take action on a law in the spring.

DEC officials said they welcome any help from towns on curbing such human behavior and promoted tenets for safe wildlife interactions. 

DEC response

Upon release of the bear records, the DEC arranged interviews with the Explorer, DEC Region 6 Wildlife Biologist Andrew MacDuff and Jeremy Hurst, DEC game management section head.

MacDuff said the records did not show how he and other staff spent a day in late May going through the village, talking with property owners, checking electric fences “and trying to be proactive.” 

John Koslosky, a Utica-based family law attorney who visits the Old Forge area often, captured the bears on video on Aug. 8, three days before they were shot. Attracted to the trash of Keyes Pancake House, Koslosky captured them getting zapped by an electric fence around the area. They ran off.

The bears were common visitors at Nick’s Lake Campground, looking for trash or a handout. And while some visitors would approach the bears at the waste transfer station, others were trying to drop off their trash and would come into contact with an angry mother bear.

In the euthanization report, the DEC officer said the mother bear growled and approached him when he first arrived on scene.

The DEC said euthanasia is a last resort in any wildlife situation, but as soon as there is a potential threat to human safety, MacDuff said “the path forward is clear.”

“I can safely say we continually review our experiences with bears, and periodically we’ll update our bear response manual to reflect that,” MacDuff said. “In this particular situation, we relied on that officer who’s a first responder to make that on-scene determination.”

MacDuff said they would have preferred a “more surgical” shot of the second cub, “but sometimes you’re not able to get a lethal shot the first time.”

DEC officials also said conditioning the bears to stay away from the village’s downtown and people would not work. Officials denied that was due to a lack of staffing at the department and in the Old Forge area. There would be no way to interact with cubs and provide aversive conditioning at every occurrence, officials said.

“These cubs were with that sow doing problematic behavior day after day,” said Jeremy Hurst, DEC Game Management Section Head. “What we’ve learned from aversive conditioning work over several decades is that it can provide temporary benefit to remove a bear from a specific spot for a short duration, and that duration can be helpful for a landowner to clean up a mess, get rid of their garbage, take down their bird feeder. But it’s not a long-term solution to change the bear’s behavior.”

Farmer is unconvinced by the DEC’s explanation that the cubs were trained to be a nuisance and could not be retrained. 

Hurst said the cubs, which he believes were about 7 months old, were capable of living on their own. The DEC works with a couple of bear rehabilitators in the state, but officials said availability can be limited.

“It’s not general practice to rehabilitate bears,” Hurst said, “even if they’re orphaned for some reason.”

Top photo: The mother bear and her cubs on Aug. 8, three days before they were shot, attempting to get into the trash of Keyes Pancake House in Old Forge. Screen capture from video by John Koslosky