A forest ranger shot and killed a black bear Thursday at the Eighth Lake state campground near Inlet after the bear threatened several campers.
"It got aggressive with campers and was charging them and hissing and growling," said state Department of Environmental Conservation wildlife biologist Ed Reed. "So we decided to euthanize the bear."
The yearling male had obtained food and had been fed by campers at the same campground earlier this summer, but it hadn't acted aggressively before Thursday, Reed said. Once it did, DEC wildlife staff determined it had to kill the animal.
"That's usually our policy if a bear becomes aggressive like that," Reed said. "Even if you move it, you're taking a potentially dangerous animal somewhere else."
This was the first bear the DEC has killed this year in Region 5, Reed said. Last summer, there were a total of eight nuisance bears killed in the Adirondacks by the DEC, homeowners and one by a camper at Marcy Dam in the High Peaks Wilderness.
But this summer had been relatively quiet until recently, when reports surfaced of one or more bears trying to break into motor vehicles looking for food at the Eighth Lake and Brown Tract Pond state campgrounds, Reed said.
In one incident at the Eighth Lake campground, a bear entered a car by breaking a driver's-side window to get at a cooler. A few days later, at the Brown Tract Pond campground a few miles up the road in Raquette Lake, there were similar reports.
"They had a night where they had five different vehicle damage incidents," Reed said. "It didn't break into five cars, but it chewed on the bumpers and tried to get into five different vehicles."
The DEC believes the bear they killed isn't the same one that broke into vehicles, Reed said.
Overall, nuisance bear complaints are down in the Adirondacks due to the abundance of natural foods this summer, according to the DEC. However, the Inlet and Old Forge area continues to have problems, most likely because bears there have gotten into the habit of obtaining food from people.
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Contact Mike Lynch at 891-2600 ext. 28 or mlynch@adirondackdailyenterprise.com.