By Karen Garcia
A brown bear nicknamed “Tripod” for an injured front leg has been causing trouble around town lately: munching on a Front Street resident’s apple trees, hanging around the Chilkat Valley Preschool and boarding vessels in the Small Boat Harbor.
For the past several days, the bear has been wandering around the harbor, gnawing on coolers and breaking equipment on boats.
Fisherman Marty Smith went down to the harbor Monday morning around 8 a.m. and followed the bear’s prints on frost-covered floats. “He cruised around every boat on the second finger (float) and opened up anything that had a cooler on board. He opened the cooler whether there was anything in there or not.”
Smith said the bear broke a handrail on the stairs leading to his boat’s flying bridge and left a pile of scat on the top of his vessel, “The High Surf.”
The bear also opened fish holds and damaged coolers on other boats, Smith said. “That bear is trained to open coolers. There was nothing in the coolers, and they were cleaned. There is no smell, no nothing. He just knows coolers are a food source and to check them.”
Smith said he is irritated police have only been hazing the bear and not killing it, when it clearly has become habituated to boats. On Monday morning, police had a clear shot of the bear when it was near the breakwater, he said.
“They had a perfect opportunity to dispatch the bear right there. He was up against the breakwater, so there is no way the bullet could have gone somewhere else. They watched the bear just walk away,” Smith said. “What’s it going to take before someone is going to do something about it?”
Harbormaster Shawn Bell, who has been getting an earful from fishermen, said he understands their position. “I’d be frustrated too if it was my personal property being destroyed. I understand where they are coming from, but I also understand the limitations and restrictions that are put on the police department,” Bell said.
Sgt. Josh Dryden said this week police can shoot bears in defense of life or property, but the threat to property and people needs to be immediate. If they don’t see the bear tearing up a boat or about to attack a person, it’s hard to justify dispatching it, he said.
Last time Dryden dealt with a problem bear at the harbor was this spring in the case of Kristopher Morden, who had one board his boat and eat fish in the hold.
“The last time I was involved with this, I called down to Juneau and spoke with (wildlife biologist Carl Koch), and I told him the whole thing that happened, and he said, ‘I would not kill that bear.’ He said, ‘I would like to see some more interventions, some more hazing go on,’” Dryden said.
Dryden said the department will consult Koch and wildlife troopers for a response.
In the meantime, fishermen may take the matter into their own hands. “A couple of my buddies are thinking of getting on their boats with their guns so they can defend their property, because nobody else is willing to do it,” said fisherman Smith.
Smith said bears have become a problem at the harbor only recently, since installation of a “gut trap” at the fish-cleaning station a couple years ago.
The trap, installed as part of the Alaska Clean Harbors initiative, collects fish guts and allows the borough to divert to the ocean volumes of fish waste. Harbormaster Bell said he tries to keep the trap clean.