Town-dwelling bears create stir
On Thursday evening, a black bear was struck and killed by a motorist on U.S. Hwy. 27 just south of the Oneida city limits. Some 72 hours later, Oneida city police officers were responding to the City Park to investigate reports of a bear sighting near the park’s entrance.
Those are but two of numerous bear sightings that have been reported in and around Oneida in recent days, and their presence is creating quite a stir.
Bear sightings are not uncommon, but the sightings of the past two weeks have marked the first in heavily populated areas of the county in several years.
On Thursday, a motorist struck and killed a bear as it loped across the highway in front of her vehicle at Oral Drive’s intersection with U.S. Hwy. 27 in the High Point area, just south of the Oneida city limits. An accident report filed by Deputy Esley Day of the Scott County Sheriff’s Department indicated that the motorist was northbound on U.S. Hwy. 27 at around 10 p.m. when the bear — estimated by witnesses to be around 150 pounds — ran in front of her vehicle. The motorist was not injured, though her vehicle sustained damage in the accident.
Shortly before dusk Sunday evening, a motorist on Buffalo Road in Oneida phoned 911 to report a bear in a field near the entrance to Oneida City Park. The bear was described as being a medium-sized bear. Several other witnesses saw the bear, but it had disappeared by the time Oneida police officers arrived on scene.
Patrolman Gerry “Greasey” Garrett, who investigated the report, said that the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) had been notified, and acting wildlife officer in charge of Scott County Travis Buchanan was expected to handle any action TWRA might decide to take should the bear be spotted again.
Also in recent weeks, bear sightings — likely of the same bear spotted Sunday near City Park, authorities say — have been made in more populated areas inside Oneida. The Oneida Police Department reports sightings near the LaFollette Housing Development on Shepherd Road and near Oak Park Apartments on Sandcut Road, both in the center of town.
TWRA Region III spokesman Dan Hicks said Tuesday that many of the increased sightings can be attributed to seasonal movements of the bears.
"It's just that time of year where the young males are dispersing and looking for somewhere to set up territory," Hicks said. "Some years there are a lot more bear sightings than others."
In addition, the summer mating season for bears typically begins in June, lasting until August.
The sightings locally came as bear sightings were also making news in Oak Ridge, Knoxville and Chattanooga. In the latter, a 220-lb. black bear was tranquilized and captured Monday near West Town Mall in West Knoxville.
Random sightings of rogue male bears moving through Scott County were an occasional, if somewhat uncommon, occurrance before the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and National Park Service teamed up for a black bear reintroduction program in the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area in the mid-1990s.
Since the initial release of 14 bears in the 115,000-acre recreation area in the winter of 1995, bear sightings in and around residential neighborhoods have become more common, especially in the last several years, as their numbers have apparently grown.
Big South Fork NRRA spokesman Steven Seven said Tuesday that best estimates put the bear population inside the park at around 50 to 60 animals. However, that’s likely a very rough estimate.
“The first 14 were tagged and collared, but they’ve long since dropped their collar,” Seven said. “We have no way of tracking them now.”
He added that it is believed that several of the bears in the area now are young males who have moved into the area from other regions, such as the Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky, looking to establish territory.
While black bears are sometimes a nuisance to homeowners with trash or wildlife feeders that are accessible to the bears, the animals are not generally aggressive.
Fatal black bear attacks have been on the increase in the U.S. in recent years, however, with two persons killed by black bears last year — one in Minnesota and one in Utah. In 2006, a six-year-old girl was killed, and her mother and toddler brother seriously injured, by a black bear in the Cherokee National Forest in East Tennessee. That incident was only the second recorded black bear fatality in Tennessee, the other being a school teacher who was killed in the Great Smoky Mountains near Gatlinburg in May 2000.
Still, wildlife biologists say that unless a bear has cubs, or has been conditioned by humans who feed it, it isn’t likely to pose a danger.