A male black bear has been safely relocated to a northern Michigan swamp after wandering into a neighborhood near Central Michigan University on Tuesday.
According to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR), Mt. Pleasant police and firefighters were called to the residential area upon receiving reports of a bear climbing a tree above a white picket fence near Fancher and Mosher streets, just north of the university.
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DNR personnel teamed up with emergency responders and other city workers to isolate and tranquilize the 150-pound bear before tagging the animal and transporting it to the Houghton Lake area roughly 60 miles away.
“Sometimes bears wander in and out of developed areas, but this one was so far inside the city limits that we thought it best to intervene and take the bear out of this situation in a safe manner,” said Mark Boersen, a DNR wildlife biologist who participated in the effort. “Eventually, he would come down out of the tree, probably at night, but removal is the safest situation for people and their pets and the bear. Everything worked out well.”
A crowd of residents watched from a safe distance while the bear was tranquilized with a dart rifle and removed from the tree by using a thick pole vault pad borrowed from Mt. Pleasant High School to catch its fall.
Once removed from the tree, biologists conducted a medical check of the bear and determined that it was healthy and unharmed.
The bear’s capture comes just three weeks after DNR officials confirmed another sighting in the Downriver area of Metro Detroit.
“In a general sense, you may encounter a bear anywhere in the Lower Peninsula,” Boersen said. “Obviously they’re less likely as you go south. But people in the Lower Peninsula should not assume that they would never have a bear come in their yard.”
As bears enter the breeding season, Boerson said bear sightings can become more likely as they cover long distances to find a mate and new sources of food. However, the vast majority of Michigan’s more than 12,000 bears live in the Upper Peninsula and norther Lower Peninsula.