State officials rescued a bear that mauled a woman in Monrovia over the weekend despite objections from city officials who asked that the bear and her two cubs be taken to the Angeles National Forest.
The bear attacked the woman and swiped her behind the knee while she was walking her dog on Oakglade Drive around 9:20 a.m. Saturday, according to Lt. Kevin Oberon of the Monrovia Police. A neighbor responded and helped scare off the bear, and the woman was treated for minor injuries, police and city officials said.
On Tuesday evening, Monrovia City Manager Dylan Feik announced that he had received a call from an official with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife informing him that the mother bear had been killed. CDFW did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
“I’m sorry to share the bad news,” Feik said in a statement. “The Monrovia City Council requested and urged that the bear and her cubs be moved to the Angeles National Forest but the decision was not the City’s.”
He added that by the time the city communicated with government officials, the decision to abort had already been made.
Feik said the DNA taken from Saturday’s incident is the same as the DNA taken from a similar incident in June when a bear swiped an old man who was sitting on his balcony in the same area near the city. The suspect had fully recovered from his injuries.
“Local CDFW officials, along with those working in state offices in Sacramento, determined that two incidents that resulted in human injuries were sufficient reason to release the bear, according to state policy,” Feik said.
Officials captured the female bear and her cubs, who were living in a cave under a nearby home, on Sunday. CDFW plans to release two young, healthy cubs into the wild, Feik said.
The issue of the killing of the bear and its orphans has met with others in the community.
“This is unacceptable,” one woman said on Instagram. “California has already lost BILLIONS of animals to the fires. The entire ecosystem has been destroyed. Now we are starting to see life coming back… and instead of protecting it, we choose to destroy it again?”
In recent years, there have been outbreaks of bears roaming the mountain areas as people continue to encroach on bear habitat. Some people say the Eaton fire in Altadena made the situation worse, driving people from their devastated area into shelters in search of food, water and shelter.
In June, the Sierra Madre recorded 41 incidents of bears entering homes, more than three times the number from the previous June. Last summer, CDFW officials made the decision to euthanize a female bear that has been linked to several burglaries in the area.
California is home to nearly 60,000 black bears, the highest population estimated anywhere in the US combined. Their presence has been consistent in the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains since about 1933, when 27 bears were moved from Yosemite National Park to Southern California.
Times staff writers Lila Seidman and Dakota Smith contributed to this report.
