ROYAL PALM BEACH, Fla. — The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said they were letting the bear go. The deputies said they had no choice but to shoot it.
Two Palm Beach County deputies shot and killed a black bear in Royal Palm Beach on Saturday afternoon after hours of tracking and a standoff with multiple deputies, drones, and FWC officers, authorities said in a news release.
The bear had been sitting 50 feet up a pine tree as deputies waited below for bear trappers to come tranquilize it, a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office news release says, but the trappers didn’t arrive in time.
The FWC said that they weren’t waiting for bear trappers at all.
A Sheriff’s Office deputy originally responded to a bear sighting a little after 8 a.m. He spotted the bear and followed it as it walked into a woman’s backyard on Belmont Drive, where it proceeded to rest in a tree next to her porch, above her trampoline.
The woman, who has three young children, told law enforcement that she feared for her and her family’s life, according to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office news release.
“I just looked out my window and saw a bear on my patio,” Sarah Loredo told CBS 12. “The worries were simply just keeping my family safe and alerting my neighbors to stay inside. The sheriff’s office did a great job of being on site and keeping everyone calm.”
The bear eventually left her property and headed to a tree on Crestwood Boulevard, where it would later die.
Meanwhile, FWC officers arrived, joined by a second PBSO deputy and the PBSO’s Drone Unit. They located the bear, but that’s where accounts conflict.
The police stated that their plan was to keep the bear in the tree until FWC trappers arrived.
“After several hours of waiting for a bear trapper and/or a tranquilizer, from FWC, all was met with negative results,” the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office news release stated, adding, “PBSO was faced with making the decision to discharge their shotguns, striking and killing the bear.”
The FWC account was different.
“In this instance we were not waiting for a tranquilizer or trapper since FWC staff determined the best approach was to let the bear leave the area on its own,” Arielle Callender, a spokesperson for the FWC’s South region, wrote in an email.
She said that the department euthanizes bears only as a last resort, if they “pose an immediate threat to people.”
This was not one of those situations, said Drew Martin, conservation chair for the Loxahatchee Group of the Sierra Club. He said the bear probably had wandered into the area overnight, looking for food. Palm Beach County is not bear country, and police don’t typically have to interact with them.
“They could have just let the bear go,” Martin said. “I think people are overly frightened. Black bears aren’t that dangerous if they leave them alone.”
