The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s employee who oversees the response plan to bears said there was little to no risk from the wild black bear and its cub that was roaming the streets of Del Rio Saturday and Sunday.
However, a situation with a dog and his owner near Main Street resulted in the dog’s owner shooting the mama bear with a pistol, local authorities said.
Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Texas Department of Public Safety have a joint investigation of the incident to determine if charges will be brought against the dog’s owner.
Jonah Evans, Texas Parks and Wildife’s mammalogist, said humans are at more risk from lightning or dogs than they are black bears, especially a black bear with a cub.
“People think of bears as a big large scary animal,” Evans said. “From 1900 through 2014 there were 14 fatal acts of black bears on humans in the Lower 48 States, and 92 percent of those cases were by male bears.”
Evans had this data in the back of his mind as he talked to biologists in Del Rio who were working the situation with the bear. “There isn’t a recorded instance of a mama bear with a cub attacking a human in Texas,” he said.
Evans said they did consider tranquilizing the bear. “When you tranquilize the bear it creates a lot of hardship,” he said. “And it can result in the bears’ death. So, the safest thing to do was encourage the bear to leave the City of Del Rio and roam naturally outside of the city.”
The Texas Parks and Wildlife team is working a plan to take care of the orphaned cub. “It’s a little too young to release into the wild now.”
They are sending the cub to a facility in New Mexico that has rehabilitated more than 500 bears and released them into the wild with an 85 percent success rate, Evans said. “We hope to release the cub back into this part of the state when winter is over.”
