HOUMA — After months of evading capture by teams of Wildlife and Fisheries specialists, a wayward Louisiana black bear seems to be calling Dularge his new home.
Despite sending out a multi-agency taskforce of bear specialists equipped with heat-sensing night-vision goggles, tranquilizer guns and snare traps to capture and relocate him, the bear remains free. Wildlife officials have ceased their efforts, and are now accepting him as an official resident of Dularge.
“The bear is alive and well,” said Mitch Samaha, a local Wildlife and Fisheries who lead efforts to catch the bear. “We realized he’s just smarter than the average bear.”
The black bear was first reported by Dularge residents in August, when he made a nuisance of himself by toppling garbage cans up and down Bayou Dularge.
Samaha said the bear, a smaller adult male weighing about 200 pounds, likely came to Terrebonne after being ousted from the nest by its mother. Though Louisiana black bear were designated a threatened species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 1992, conservation and protection efforts aimed at restoring the bear have helped populations rebound, according to the Black Bear Conservation Coalition. Scientists believe there are between 500 and 700 Louisiana black bears roaming Louisiana and Mississippi today.
But that also means that Louisiana black bears, who can need about 20,000 acres to roam and forage for food, are wandering more and more into human-populated areas that haven’t seen black bears for decades like Terrebonne.
“This was one of the original home rages of the black bear,” Samaha said. “But he’s been gone so long that our generation isn’t used to him.”
