SALT LAKE CITY — A bear wandering through the Avenues neighborhood in Salt Lake City was safely tranquilized and removed late Wednesday, continuing the rising trend of bear sightings and encounters throughout Utah.
The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources first received reports on Tuesday of a bear moving through the foothills and heading west. It was spotted again in the Avenues, leading to a DNR officer response, along with the Salt Lake City police and fire departments on Wednesday.
“Yeah, it really caught me off guard!" said resident Jeff Pendleton, who caught the bear on camera. "My first thought [was] that it was a dog or a coyote.”
Biologists located the bear in a tree just after 9:30 p.m. and removed it after tranquilizing the animal.
The sighting was the second of the day within a northern Utah residential area. Earlier Wednesday, officials safely removed a bear after it was spotted near the Heber City Airport in Wasatch County.
Ephraim residents receive morning jolt from wayward bear in video below:
For Pendleton, who was born and raised in Utah and an Avenues resident for about a year, spotting a bear cub in his backyard was not on his bingo card.
“Definitely a long way from where it came from, presumably," he said.
“Yeah, this has been a really hard year for bears,” said the agency's Chad Wilson.
Wilson explained how a warmer-than-normal winter, then a spring freeze, impacted the vegetation black bears need to survive.
“When that happens, the young can get kicked off from mom a little bit earlier, or they just have a harder time on the mountain," he said. "So they usually go out to new areas, exploring, just trying to find food.”
Black bear found, relocated after seen roaming Provo neighborhood:
Pendleton suspects that was the case with his bear encounter.
“The little cub seemed just very disoriented and hungry," said Pendleton. "Kind of seemed like it was confused and looking for, most likely, food.”
Wilson said the bear found in the Avenues, and possibly others, will likely resurface this fall.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to see more bears in the cities and other places where we usually don’t see them," he said.