Game And Fish Department Captures Bear In East Casper

A yearling black bear was captured east of Casper on Friday morning, a Wyoming Game and Fish spokeswoman said.

The department began receiving reports from residents of a bear visiting east Casper after dark on Saturday, and it confirmed the reports on Wednesday, said Janet Milek of the department's field office.

"We were able to start to setting a bear trap on private land kind of on the outskirts of town so that there was no people or dogs or anything around," Milek said.

The bear probably came to the city from Casper Mountain by way of the Elkhorn Valley, which is a great corridor for traveling animals, she said.

"After two nights of having the trap out we were able to successfully trap him this morning, and he's a healthy runt black bear who's a yearling, which means he's just really small," she said  "He's just about 60 pounds. He had shown no aggression toward people when he was coming in late at night so we were able to safely relocate him into the Laramie Range."

This bear is not related to the one captured in east Casper in May, which also was  relocated to the Laramie Range, Milek said. The Laramie Range starts south of Casper Mountain and continues south beyond Wheatland.

The Game and Fish Department biologists will find an area without much human activity or cabins or other bears with their own established territory, she said. Bears are solo animals, she added.

"If there's a more dominant bear, those little guys kind of get pushed out, so they'll just find him a new place where there's not a huge bear population and he'll be safe,"Milek said.