A bear was removed from a tree on the RIT campus Wednesday morning. And officials with the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation say it was likely the same, young black bear that was spotted in the area in recent days.
When it was located in an area on the north side of the campus, safety officers cordoned off the area, and the DEC ended up using a tranquilizer gun to get the bear down off the tree.
Senior Wildlife Biologist Art Kirsch says authorities had a net below the tree to catch the bear when the tranquilizer took hold. Kirsch says they decided to take that action rather than just leave the bear to come down on his own and wander around.
"When we saw the situation the bear was very accessible, he wasn't too far up the tree, but the fact that he was on a college campus in suburbia weighed into it. We could have tried and waited for him to come down, but my hunch was, and sometimes you have to go on your hunches, and my hunch was he was going to be a continual problem for us," Kirsch told WXXI News.
The bear was drugged, but said to be doing ok, and will be brought to a wilderness area in the Southern Tier. DEC officials say the bear likely was born over the winter, and was looking for a new home. It's not the first time something like this happened; there was also tranquilized and removed from the RIT campus in 2010.
