Anchorage, Alaska – Earlier this week, wildlife officials in Anchorage, Alaska, killed four black bears, including a mother and her two cubs. Alaska Department of Fish and Game agents killed the bears on Tuesday because the animals had been frequenting the Centennial Park Campground, which has recently been repurposed as a campground for homeless people.
In a news release, Biologist Dave Battle justified the killings as a safety issue:
“Centennial Campground staff are doing the best they can to manage the campground and minimize attractants, but there are still a lot of tents with food in them. Until that changes, more bears are going to come into the campground and get into tents. That’s a safety issue both for the people staying there now, and anyone who stays there after them.”
Efforts are being made to educate the people at the campground about safe bear practices. Parks and Recreation Director Mike Braniff said:
“This is 24 hours a day, we send somebody out to make the rounds, to see what’s going on, communicate with folks. And also volunteer to clean up any trash they may have accumulated since the last visit.”
Hundreds of bears live in and around Anchorage. It is unclear if killing bears who enter the campground area will continue. Battle stated:
“Killing any particular bear is a very temporary solution There are always going to be more bears in that vicinity because of its location, and we can’t teach bears not to eat what they can find.”
(Image via Pixabay Free Images)
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THIS IS PURE EVIL!!!! WHY kill innocent animals? Because humans take their habitat? This is the world upside down!!! These officials are bloodthirsty criminals and they must pay!!!
Well that makes me so angry!! They killed a Mother bear and 2 cubs…!!! This sickens me. This is home for the bears and at minimum they should have been relocated!! People don’t belong there. Alaska needs to take care of its homeless population not have them living in the woods and shooting the wildlife attempting to keep them safe.
That is absolutely disgusting and not a solution!
This is simply not right!!!!! This is their habitat!!!!
Those homeless peoples shouldn’t have ever been ser-up there. You can’t simply take away the habitat of an animal. Justice must be served. All lives are precious!!
Why kill them??!!😠😠😠 They should have been relocated!!!😪💔🐾🙏Dam you killers!!!
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated” Gandhi
Gandhi actually never said this – look it up, you’ll see a ton of contradictions. Nice thought, but it’s been used to death.
And it should be obvious to even a casual observer that virtually EVERY nation fails that concept.
Further proof that these stupid “authorities” don’t know crap about caring about people OR animals. First they unfund the facilities that WERE helping the homeless, then they stopped doing much of anything for them, and then they dump them where the wildlife needs to live. IDIOTS IDIOTS IDIOTS.
we are in there land. and they get punished. if this dam country can send billions of products gas financial help to other countries we can think k of a better place to put our homeless. this country is in desperate need of help in businesses all over why can’t they work some. help themselves. this country is going to hell much more quickly than we can imagine!!
Why not let the homeless deal with the bears by themselves? Isn’t that the fairest method?
Many good suggestions for a better solution than the easiest out of just killing the bears. It doesn’t even solve the problem in the least because other bears will come too. So they’re just going to keep killing them!!! Stupid & cruel. Hiw about a fence around the campgrounds? How about sedaing the bears & moving them elsewhere.? Better yet how about moving to homeless indoors some place like suggested unused warehouse. The tent grounds will also be too cold to live in during the Alaskan winter.
If they can’t keep their tents clean then they need to move them out.
Animals alway pay the price for lazy irresponsible people.
It is not a temporary solution for the bears you killed! How about spending some of that oil money on housing for the homeless? For those that chose to live in the great outdoors, let them accept the risk as does anyone hiking or camping.
How do homeless survive the Alaskan winter living outdoors in a tent?
How about booting the ones who won’t keep food out of bears reach.. Make it a rule.