LIMON, Colo. — A young bear that had wandered into a “terrible spot for bears” on the plains south of Limon was captured and relocated on Sunday, according to Colorado Parks & Wildlife (CPW).
The 2 to 3-year-old male bear was spotted last month in Elbert and Lincoln counties, in a dry, rural area that is not friendly to these mountain-dwelling creatures, said CPW spokesman Bill Vogrin. The first sighting was May 11, and CPW officers had been looking for it ever since.
“We don’t know how it got there,” Vogrin said last week, when CPW asked for the public's help in finding the lost bear. “It may have followed a drainage. It may have been chased out of the mountains by larger adult males. We don’t know how it got there, but we don’t want it to stay there."
CPW tracked the bear to Truckton, Hugo and the Limon area, which is about about 90 miles southeast of Denver by way of Interstate 70.
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The search came to a successful end on Sunday when CPW Officers Sarah Watson and Ben Meier found it in a horse pasture.
The horses apparently weren't too happy about the bear because they were chasing it around the pasture. After a two-hour pursuit, Watson and Meier were able to dart the boar and transport it to the mountains where it belongs, CPW said.
“There’s just not a bear habitat out on the plains,” Vogrin said last week. “There’s not appropriate crops, no nuts and berries and fruits and orbs, all that they need to survive. It doesn’t exist out there in the kind of quantities that they need.”
This won’t count as a “strike” against the bear, CPW said.
“We want to help him live a long, wild life,” Vogrin said.
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