State officials have euthanized a bear who swiped a woman in Monrovia over the weekend despite objections from city officials who asked that the female bear and her two cubs be relocated to the Angeles National Forest.
The bear charged at the woman and swiped at the back of her knee as she was walking her dog along Oakglade Drive around 9:20 a.m. Saturday, according to Monrovia Police Lt. Kevin Oberon. A neighbor responded and helped scare the bear away, and the woman was treated for non-serious injuries, police and city officials said.
On Tuesday evening, Monrovia City Manager Dylan Feik announced that he had received a call from a California Department of Fish and Wildlife official notifying him that the mother bear had been euthanized. The CDFW did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
“I am sorry to share the unfortunate news,” Feik said in a statement. “The Monrovia City Council requested and lobbied for the bear and her cubs to be relocated into the Angeles National Forest but the decision was never the City’s to make.”
He added that by the time the city made contact with state officials, the decision to euthanize was already made.
Feik said that DNA taken from Saturday’s incident matched DNA taken from a similar incident in June when a bear swiped at an elderly man sitting on his porch in the same area of the foothills city. The man had fully recovered from his injuries.
“Local CDFW officials, as well as those working at state offices in Sacramento, determined the two incidents which caused human injury were sufficient justification to euthanize the bear, according to state policy,” Feik said.
Officials captured the female bear and her cubs, who were living in a den underneath a nearby home, on Sunday. CDFW plans on releasing the two young, healthy cubs into wildland areas, Feik said.
The news of the bear’s killing and her orphaned cubs has been met with outrage by some in the community.
“This is unacceptable,” one woman shared on Instagram. “California has already lost MILLIONS of animals due to the fires. Entire ecosystems have been destroyed. We are only now starting to see life come back… and instead of protecting it, we are choosing to destroy it again?”
In recent years, there has been an uptick in bears wandering into foothill neighborhoods as humans continue to encroach on bear territory. Some people say that the Eaton fire in Altadena worsened the situation, driving bruins whose habitat was destroyed into residential areas to seek food, water and shelter.
In June, Sierra Madre recorded 41 instances of bears entering homes, more than triple the previous June tally. Last summer, CDFW officials made the decision to euthanize a female bear linked to several break-ins in the neighborhood.
California is home to roughly 60,000 black bears, the highest population estimate for anywhere in the contiguous U.S. Their consistent presence in the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains dates back to around 1933, when 27 bears from Yosemite National Park were relocated in Southern California.
Times staff writers Lila Seidman and Dakota Smith contributed to this report.
