A black bear sow died after she was struck by a motorcycle Thursday morning in Juneau. As a result, wildlife officials had to euthanize her two cubs.
Sgt. Chris Gifford with the Juneau Police Department says a 58-year-old local man was riding a BMW motorcycle near mile 32 of the Glacier Highway, just past Eagle Beach.
“The bear basically darted out in front of the man that was riding his motorcycle, and it’s a section of roadway that has a 55 mph zone, and he wasn’t able to stop,” Gifford says.
The man was wearing a helmet. Gifford says his injuries were serious, but not life threatening. He was taken to Bartlett Regional Hospital. The motorcycle is estimated to have $5,000 in damages. Gifford doesn’t know how fast the man was riding. He wasn’t cited, but Gifford says an investigation is ongoing.
Alaska Department of Fish and Game personnel and State Wildlife Troopers also responded to the incident.
Wildlife biologist Stephanie Sell says they noticed the 180-pound female bear was lactating. She found two cubs in nearby trees. They were about 6 pounds each and about the size of large rabbits. She thinks they were born in January or February.
Sell tried to find a home for them in a zoo or another facility that takes orphaned wildlife.
“Unfortunately there are black bears all over the United States and they’re kind of a dime a dozen, so not many people want the black colored cubs. They want those glacier bear phase cubs, so there wasn’t any placement for the bears,” she says.
Cubs of the year rely on their mom for nutrients and Sell says they likely wouldn’t have survived more than a week in the wild.
“As mom is going around and foraging, these cubs are nursing and they’re getting protein, but they’re also getting their water from their mom as well and they have not learned how to forage on their own,” Sell says. “So basically they would either starve, they’d get hit by a car themselves, or a predator or scavenging bird would probably kill them.”
Sell advises motorists to slow down or stop if they see a bear on or near a road.
“More than half the time it might be a sow and those cubs are going to dart out after the mom after the fact. So if mom and one of the cubs make it across the street, then maybe that second or third cub gets hit,” Sell says.
A few bears are hit by motorists each year in Juneau. This is the second that Sell knows of this season. A car hit a bear last month near the Auke Rec area in the middle of the night. The bear was severely injured and Sell says it was euthanized.
