Officials catch bear they say attacked boy
Posted on Thursday, July 13, 2006
MENA — Wildlife officials captured a bear Wednesday afternoon that they believed attacked a toddler the previous day in the Shady Lake Recreation Area of the Ouachita National Forest.
Arkansas Game and Fish Commission employees set three traps in and around the campground Wednesday, and a Forest Service technician spotted a bear in one shortly after 4 p.m. The bear will be taken to the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission in Little Rock, where it will be killed today.
It also will be tested for rabies, a disease that rarely afflicts bears, bear biologist Rick Eastridge said. As a precaution, the remaining traps will be left an additional day.
The quick capture reassures Eastridge that they found the bear that entered a family’s tent and attacked the 23-month-old boy, who received scratches on his arm, but no serious injuries. The boy’s mother scared off the bear.
While the bear won’t undergo testing to check for human DNA under his claws, Eastridge said that they believe they have the right bear for a number of reasons.
Bears are creatures of habit, often returning to the same sites for food, and since a bear hadn’t been spotted in the campground area for several years — bears are notoriously people-shy — it’s unlikely that another bear would have happened by Wednesday, he said.
Last month, officials in Tennessee confirmed that a black bear they captured and killed days after the fatal mauling of a 6-year-old girl wasn’t responsible for the girl’s death. The girl’s younger half-brother was also seriously hurt in the April attack. DNA tests confirmed another bear, which also was killed, was responsible for the attack.
Wildlife officials stressed Wednesday that black bear attacks are rare, but they should be a reminder to campers to safeguard food and properly dispose of scraps. They said the bear likely was drawn to the campsite by grease and other food scraps.
The Polk County campground where the attack occurred, about an hour southeast of Mena, has been closed, said C. J. Norvell, a spokesman for the Ouachita National Forest, which spans 1. 8 million acres from central Arkansas to southeastern Oklahoma.
A bear entered the tent while the child and his mother were napping. It clawed into the tent, striking the boy. The mother’s screams scared the bear off, Norvell said.
Attempts to reach the mother were unsuccessful. In an interview with Shreveport’s KTBS the mother, Mystee Bennett of Texarkana, said that other children were in the tent at the time and that she awoke to see the bear grab hold of her son.
“When I looked up, he had a hold of his elbow and was dragging him by his elbow and dragging him off the bed,” Bennett told the television station Tuesday night.
Norvell said the bear could have foraged at the site before and returned looking for food.
“He was probably as surprised as the people in the tent,” she said. “This is highly unusual. That bear was probably really frightened to see people there.” Keith Stephens, a spokesman for the Game and Fish Commission, said fewer than five black bear attacks have been reported in Arkansas in the past 20 years.
An estimated 3, 500 black bears live in Arkansas, mostly in the Ozark and Ouachita mountains, but the bears also can be found in southern Arkansas and the Delta.
Tuesday’s attack was the first in more than five years, he said.
None of the previous attacks resulted in fatalities or serious injuries.
In one case, a man trying to snap a picture of a bear got too close and got swatted. In other cases, people who tried to pet or feed a black bear got a similar reception, Stephens said. Females with cubs have also been known to be aggressive.
“It’s so rare we don’t expect this to happen anytime, really,” Eastridge said.
Bears eat vegetation and insects. They’re also opportunists and will eat carrion they run across and, of course, they will sniff out people food.
Eastridge and Stephens said that people should never feed wildlife. “When [bears ] become habituated to people, they get used to being fed,” Stephens said.
Stephens said the state lacks a wilderness area large enough to release the bear into without the possibility of it making its way back to a campground, making killing bears that attack people the best option.
The barrel-shaped culvert traps used to catch the bear have a grate on one end, so the bear can see what he’s entering, and a solid metal door on the other.
When the bear’s paw hits a trigger located just before the bait, typically carp, the metal door slams shut.
Eastridge said that with “a truly wild black bear, when you see them, the next thing you see is their rear end running away.” But nuisance bears — those that start scavenging bird feed or trash cans — get much bolder, raiding campsites at night and then becoming more brazen and returning even in daylight hours.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
