this is an electecuted bear.

Grizzlies bite off too much
One bruin dies after chomping 5,000-volt line; another flattens tents

By MEGAN HOLLAND
Anchorage Daily News (http://www.adn.com/front/story/8067062p-7958666c.html )

Published: August 11, 2006
Last Modified: August 12, 2006 at 04:33 AM


Two brown bears prowling separate parts of Anchorage have made deep trouble for themselves -- with one already dead after biting into a power line.


A 600-pound brown bear made its way to the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail on the edge of Kincaid Park and was killed when it opened a utility box and bit into a live electrical wire Thursday.

And south of town, a young brown bear among the bruin crowd that has been roaming Bird Creek this summer is slated to be killed after flattening tents in two incidents at the nearby campground. State biologist Rick Sinnott said a trap was set for the bear Thursday.

Black bears are commonly seen in Anchorage during summer, but their bigger counterparts, brown bears, are far more rare.

A child discovered the electrocuted bear Thursday morning while riding her bicycle on the Sisson Loop trail, a dirt path in the northern part of the park, said Robert Hughes, recreation supervisor at Kincaid. The bear was 50 yards from the popular Coastal Trail, traveled by hundreds of pedestrians, bicyclists and others every day.

The bear found at Kincaid was a healthy adult male that had made its way to the park either by passing through the residential areas near the park, by coming up from Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge or by swimming across Cook Inlet, Sinnott speculated.

Sinnott estimated the bear to weigh more than 600 pounds: "He's one of the bigger brown bears I've seen in Anchorage."

He said he would not likely be able to age the animal because its teeth were burned from the electrocution.

Thursday afternoon, the 7-foot animal, stiff in death, lay on its side. The bear still had the wire in its mouth, its tongue and teeth burned and blackened. A patch of grass under the left foot was singed. The smell of scorched meat hung in the air.

The bear found the two wires -- about the thickness of vacuum cords -- by first ripping off a 3-foot high protective plastic box. It appeared that almost instantly when the bear bit into the wire, it was electrocuted. "It didn't thrash much, it was pretty quick," Sinnott said.

Bears like to chew on plastic, said Sinnott, who was not surprised the bruin was curious about the box and its contents. "I don't know what they get out of it, but they are curious and he might have tried to investigate it just because it's rubber or plastic."

The bear bit into 5,000 volts of energy, according to a Chugach Electric Association spokesman Phil Steyer, who said the apparatus did not belong to the company but likely to the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, the owner of the land where the bear was found.

Steyer said the company often deals with birds or squirrels that are electrocuted, but in his 19 years on the job, he's never heard of anything close to the size of a brown bear being killed by the wires.

Meanwhile at Bird Creek, the popular salmon fishing stream 25 miles south of Anchorage, brown bears have wandered into angler areas this summer in unusual numbers, stealing fish and drawing crowds. One young bear in recent weeks tried to flatten tents at the campground, Sinnott said. In the latest incident on Sunday, a couple and their child, about 8 or 9 years old, were awake in the tent when they saw a large shadow appear above them, Sinnott said. "And then the bear came down on them," he said.

The three threw their legs up to kick it off and screamed, Sinnott said. No one was injured and the bear fled.

"People carry nylon containers of food, and the bears are associating the material with food," he said. Sinnott on Thursday set a trap involving a large container and salmon to try and capture the animal.

After the Sunday incident, state parks, which operates the campground, closed the area to tents.

That poor creature. What a waste. Awful way to go........