Baker City bear was released in Wallowas

Published 8:00 am Friday, July 8, 2022

BAKER CITY — Baker City’s most famous black bear — or at least the most photographed — is likely roaming today somewhere in the southern Wallowa Mountains.

Which is better bear habitat than a birch tree between two apartment buildings.

The bear, which ran through part of Quail Ridge Golf Course on Sunday morning, July 3, then crossed Foothill Drive and climbed that tree, ended up tranquilized and in a cage later that morning.

Brian Ratliff, district wildlife biologist at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Baker City office, fired the tranquilizer dart that gave the yearling male bear a temporary nap.

The sleeping bear got stuck, however, in the tree about 25 feet above the ground.

Jeff Smith, who owns J2K Excavating and lives on Foothill Drive, offered the use of his bucket lift to retrieve the bear.

Ratliff said the bear awoke in the cage about 11:30 a.m. on July 3, a little more than an hour after he fired the tranquilizer dart.

“By noon it was mobile,” Ratliff said of the bear.

He released the bear in the Eagle Creek area northeast of Baker City.

“It ran straight down a hill,” he said. “It did not want to stick around, which is exactly what we like to see.”

That behavior is typical of a truly wild animal that is not accustomed to being around people, Ratliff said.

He said he suspects the bear, which weighed about 150 pounds, had separated from its mother, as bears tend to do after their first birthday.

“I think it just wandered into town and got caught after daylight where it didn’t want to be,” Ratliff said.

He said there were no reports of the bear nosing into garbage cans or other behavior that could suggest the bear was comfortable around people.

In those cases, ODFW officials are likely to kill the bear rather than trap it and release it in the wild.

Ratliff said the foothill above the city’s southwest corner probably is a travel corridor for wildlife, including the occasional bear.

Another yearling bear was tranquilized in November 2015 in a backyard near 11th and Myrtle streets, less than half a mile from Foothill Drive.

ODFW biologists also tranquilized and released that bear.