Great Smoky National Park officials euthanized a 60-pound female black bear responsible for biting a visitor earlier this month.
After tearing a chunk out of a guy’s foot when he came to close with a camera while hiking the Laurel Falls Trail on May 12, park rangers were able to capture the bear the next day. Wildlife biologists confirmed that the young bear was the culprit.
Policy states that all animals that attack humans must be put down, according to park spokeswoman Nancy Gray. Soon after the incident, however, a Facebook group with more than 5,000 members appeared, calling for the bear—which they called “Laurel”—to be saved.
Patty Lanke, the creator of the group, said, “[The hiker] was wrong for doing what he did, whether the bear approached him or not.”
Commenters on the group page asserted that an organization in Townsend that rehabilitates black bears, the Appalachian Bear Custody, would take the bear in if it were to be spared.
But the Custody’s curator, Lisa Stewart, said otherwise.
Stewart told the Knoxville News Sentinel that while she was just as upset by the bear’s fate as the Facebook users, the Custody is “not permitted to go out and capture bears. [They] wait for wildlife officials to bring one in.”
Standing firm on the park’s decision to euthanize the bear, Gray said that they could not risk letting it live among people again.
[Via: Knoxville News Sentinel]
[Photo via: Knoxville News Sentinel]
