A 6 ½ year-old female grizzly bear was shot by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials after repeatedly killing sheep at a ranch near the Dry Fork of the Marias River.
The bear was located on a plot of private land and Craig Glazier of Wildlife Services shot the grizzly as they circled the animal from the sky in a helicopter. FWP then gained permission from landowners to recover the bear, where she was then transported to Great Falls, Montana.
The event comes in the midst of a busy spring for bear activity in the area as the mild weather pushed bears from their dens much earlier than usual.
“It’s pretty much been nonstop,” Mike Madel, an FWP grizzly bear management specialist, told the Great Falls Tribune about grizzly bear conflicts in the area.
The decision to remove the bear came after lengthy consultations between FWP, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services. Typically in these types of situations, female bears are given three strikes before they are removed from the population, but the process was expedited on this particular female.
Given that she had visited the same ranch and killed sheep and was also spending a great deal of her time around other farms and ranches, the decision was made to remove her permanently after just two strikes.
“It’s hard to manage the population when you have individual bears like this adult female that repeatedly killed livestock and also are spending a lot of time on creek bottoms where people live,” Madel said.
Multiple attempts were made to capture the bear using foot snares, but it was agreed that removal was the next step if officials were not able to successfully capture the bear alive.
