Police Kill a Bear Cornered at Urban New Jersey Home

...Taking no chances, the police shot and killed the 218-pound bear about 1:30 p.m. Wednesday. It was the second bear in five days to be killed after wandering into an urban area where a new state bear management policy allows the animals to be shot and killed. Wildlife officials said the Irvington bear was 1 or 2 years old. New Jersey's most densely populated areas have been designated "bear management zones," where local authorities are being trained to tranquilize bears and move them to state-run wildlife areas. But if a bear creates a hazard, Department of Environmental Protection officials can order that it be killed, as happened on Wednesday, said Elaine Makatura, a department spokeswoman. That was also the case near downtown Trenton Saturday, when environmental protection officials fatally shot a 225-pound, 3-year-old black bear. On Tuesday, a bear was spotted in Livingston, and sightings were reported Wednesday in Newark, Orange and South Orange. As the Irvington police carried the bear's body in a blue plastic tarpaulin from the backyard of a blue shingled house three blocks west of the Garden State Parkway, Deputy Chief Steven Palamara said he had hoped to tranquilize the bear and get it back to the woods. But during the chase, the bear had moved from backyards to sidewalks, jumping fences "as if they were curbs," he said. The police had summoned animal control officers with tranquilizer guns from Morristown. But as two police officers and an animal control officer approached to within about 10 feet of the bear, it reared up on its hind legs, and the plan changed...more