23 December 2021
In Case You Missed It …
Three days before Christmas a 260 pound black bear was trapped behind Boy Scout Headquarters in Downtown Pittsburgh where he’d been living for more than two weeks on a wooded hillside. He would have gone unnoticed except for the huge mess he left at the dumpsters every night.
The Energy Innovation Center, next door to the Boy Scouts, set up a surveillance camera and caught him in the act.
Hands up! Stop raiding the dumpsters!
Game Warden Doug Berman of the PA Game Commission brought over the bear trap and the rest is history. Find out more in Mary Ann Thomas’ story at Trib Live: Black bear trapped in Downtown Pittsburgh Wednesday Morning and see her video tweets embedded below.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission trapped a 200-pound bear next to a dumpster in the Energy Innovation Center’s parking lot along Bedford Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh Wednesday morning. pic.twitter.com/TRLSpiZyDR
— Mary Ann Thomas (@MaThomas_Trib) December 22, 2021
Douglas Bergman, a game warden with the Pennsylvania Game Commission, explains how a black bear was living for several weeks In the City of Pittsburgh in December of 2021. pic.twitter.com/sKvdm8LmaA
— Mary Ann Thomas (@MaThomas_Trib) December 22, 2021
MUST SEE: This 200-pound black bear was caught in downtown Pittsburgh and released into the wild in Somerset >>> https://t.co/tto8pIwheb pic.twitter.com/N4TMa4BCKG
— WPXI (@WPXI) December 22, 2021
This is how close the bear was to Downtown Pittsburgh’s skyscrapers. I wonder if he’ll miss this view from the parking lot.
(Christmas bear from Wikimedia Commons, photo of Boy Scout Headquarters at Flag Plaza from Google Street View, view from the parking lot by Kate St. John, tweets embedded from Mary Ann Thomas; click on the captions to see the originals)
I was just reading about this; it’s insane!! I wonder what path he took to get into the city and make it all the way to the area he seemed to set up shop in. Unless he came from the east he would have had to use one of the bridges to get near downtown, right?
Andrew, bears have been known to swim across the rivers. It’s quite possible this one swam.
Oh wow! That’s insane. I didn’t know black bears could swim let alone swim across a pretty big river.
Thoughts on why this bear wasn’t hibernating?
Stephanie, in the second tweeted video, the interview with Game Warden Doug Bergman, he answers that question saying that the bear isn’t hibernating because it has been too warm and there is plenty of food (in the dumpsters).