Car-burgling Bear with Long Rap Sheet Killed at Yosemite

San Francisco Chronicle, June 14, 2001


A car-burgling bear with a long rap sheet was killed Thursday and her cubs were captured after they came down from a tree at a campground in Yosemite Valley.

The 250-pound sow named Eenie had been a problem bear for years, breaking into cars, tents and trash bins, said park spokesman Scott Gediman. She was the third generation in a family of rogue bears.

Biologists plan to raise the 4-month-old cubs out of the wild this year and away from tourists. They want to break the habit of campground foraging their mother had learned and will attempt to free the twins in the Yosemite wilderness next year.

The decision to kill the mother angered some campers and saddened park rangers who tried unsuccessfully to relocate the 8-year-old black bear.
But she kept finding her way back to the valley that attracts most of the park’s tourists.

"Yosemite is all about a wild place and wild animals," Gediman said. "We feel people should see bears, but see them in a meadow pulling termites out of a log rather than in the back of their Ford pickup."

In the past few years, the number of car break-ins and damage caused by bears has declined, but more bears have been killed each year.

Eenie is the first bear killed this year. Five bears were euthanized last year, four were put down in 1999 and three were killed in 1998.

Park rangers say the bears are not the problem, they are a symptom of ignorant campers who leave food in cars, tents and backpacks, where bears can get it.

There was food in each of the three cars Eenie broke into, Gediman said. When she was discovered in the third car Wednesday morning, she became startled and ran up a cedar tree in the middle of Lower Pines campground. Her cubs followed her up the tree.

She climbed down about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday and was tranquilized and killed Thursday morning after her cubs came down from the tree and were captured.

Her cubs were taken to a state Fish and Game facility in Sacramento.