AURORA, Colo. — Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) and the Aurora Police Department (APD) spent much of their Tuesday tracking a bear that was spotted in an Aurora neighborhood Tuesday morning.
The agencies were working in the area of the 23500 block of East Briarwood Drive, off E-470 between East Smoky Hill Road and East Arapahoe Road, to find the bear.
Aurora police said they received a call about the bear in the area of E. Briarwood Drive and South Catawba Way just before 7 a.m. They initially spotted it in someone's backyard and then waited for additional help from CPW.
A ring camera in that area captured a bear walking across a driveway in the early morning hours of Sept. 16.
The bear was later tracked to the area of Arapahoe Road and E-470.
Just after 4 p.m. the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office tweeted that they had launched a drone to help with the search and found the bear but it didn't want to come out of a retention pond in that area.
They said they left it alone and that it "looked healthy and seemed happy."
CPW has left the area for now but said they are still planning to relocate the bear to the mountains once they can safely tranquilize it.
"It’s going to be really hard for that bear to move out on its own,” Jason Clay with CPW said. "that’s kind of why we wanted to leave the area let things calm down. It’s obviously going to move somewhere. We hope it’s in a good direction in a spot where we could relocate it safely."
For now, they’re asking people who live nearby to keep any food source like bird feeders, trash and pets inside.
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