Visiting bears have Anchorage on edge

updated 1:58 p.m. ET May 11, 2009

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Spring is here and bears are emerging from their dens for the short stroll to Alaska's largest city. Some residents are putting out the NO VACANCY sign.

Anchorage has a reputation for being bear tolerant but after three maulings last summer — including a 15-year-old girl who nearly bled to death when attacked by a grizzly in a city park — a chorus of outrage is building.

Wanda Phillips is among them. She recently moved from Washington state — where she saw no bears — to the Anchorage suburb of Eagle River, where there are lots of bears.

Last summer, Phillips saw at least 10 bears near her home. A grizzly camped out in her back yard defending a moose kill. Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials told her to keep the family inside until the bear was finished with the carcass.

"It (that advice) didn't seem very helpful to me," she said. "We have a real safety problem. The fact they are ignoring it is a time bomb."

Anchorage is unique among mid-sized American cities. The municipality's 285,000 residents share space with at least 65 brown bears and about 250 black bears. The sprawling municipality is surrounded by wild country. Anchorage is next to Chugach State Park, a half-million acre park that wildlife officials have described as a "bear factory."

Deaths from bear maulings are uncommon in the municipality. In July 1995, a mother and son were killed by a bear defending a moose carcass along McHugh Creek Trail. However, the mauling of Petra Davis, followed by another attack on the same park trail later last summer and the mauling of a young man in Eagle River, have some residents demanding a crackdown on the bears.

Cruising the 'hood on trash day
Trash day is a real spectacle, Phillips said.

"You can sit on the deck and look from our windows and watch them cruise the neighborhood looking for people that don't use bear cans. They literally go from driveway to driveway to driveway," Phillips said.

Her children are not allowed to walk alone this time of year. They always are armed with pepper spray, she said.

Last summer, some children walking home from school encountered a large grizzly. They huddled up in a driveway, made lots of noise to scare off the bear and called for help on their cell phones.

Al Grillo / AP A grizzly bear at the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage tosses a trash can, showing how easy it is for bears to get into trash. The demonstration was part of the zoo's "Bear Aware" program that teaches basic bear safety concepts.

Phillips, who was at her job 20 minutes away, got a call.

"My kids are screaming 'There is a grizzly bear. We can't get home,'" she said.

One of the mothers rescued the children.

"I think a kid is going to end up being killed," Phillips said.

Already this summer, there is a feeling of deja vu. Last Friday, a sign went up on one of the city's most popular trails warning people of a black bear sow defending her cubs. Last month, a black bear chased some skiers and treed a man in the same park where two maulings occurred last summer.

Biologist not alarmed
"People think, 'Holy cow, we are under assault'," said Rick Sinnott, an area biologist with the Department of Fish and Game overseeing the bear problem.

In a move to target bolder bears before they reach Anchorage, Sinnott said hunting opportunities for brown bear have been increased in the Chugach State Park. Ten permits will be issued. Sinnott hopes no more than three are killed.

"We don't really want to reduce the population that much," he said.

Anchorage is not being overrun by bears, Sinnott said.

"I think it was kind of an unusual situation last year in part because I think we had a couple of brown bear sows with cubs in places where we probably can't tolerate them," he said.

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