Bear shot near Sisters

Last week, a black bear appeared in the southwest section of the City of Sisters, doing things that it should not have been doing.

"I really don't know if it was the same bear that was in the park in Sisters," Steven George, wildlife biologist in the Bend ODFW office said, "but it was for sure knocking over garbage cans, and once that starts, there's no stopping it."

George says the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife has a list of bear hunters who have asked to be called when a problem bear shows up. The situation in Sisters last week was just that kind of problem, and as it is the department's policy to eliminate garbage bears, a bear-hunter was called and the bear was shot, legally, on National Forest land.

"We had a similar situation at Spring River, recently," George said. "A bear was getting into garbage, and destroyed a bee-keeper's hives. The beekeeper put up an electric fence that prevented further damages, George added, "but the bear just went down the road and got itself into more trouble, and we called in a bear hunter."

Years of sad experience with bears that take to eating handouts and garbage on the perimeters of places like Sisters has left ODFW with no choice other than to destroy the bear before someone, or someone's pet or livestock gets hurt.

And along those lines... while I was in the process of writing this story, a woman in Crossroads called to say she was actually frightened by what she called, "a herd of raccoons" coming to her house every night looking for garbage. Investigation into the reasons why raccoons are hanging around disclosed they are spending the day sleeping under the porch of a house close to the woman's residence, and nights prowling around Crossroads looking for things to eat.

The woman has three outdoor cats that she feeds during the day, but then takes in the cat food at night, so, that rules out her place as the source of food. Unfortunately, there has to be someone else - or perhaps others - who are leaving food for the raccoons, intentionally or unknowingly. There is only one reason they are hanging around: they have food and shelter.

Raccoons are very much like bear, they habituate very quickly to being fed, or finding food around humans. And that's always the beginning of a conflict between wildlife and people.

While conducting an opossum study in the Portland/Beaverton area, I investigated hundreds of calls about possum and raccoons getting into garbage cans. At a house in Lake Oswego I found an adult male raccoon that actually taught a German shepherd how to climb a tree to safety while the victorious raccoon dined on the dog's food.

Please! Do not feed the wildlife. They don't need it.