Wildlife authorities in Sitka shot and killed three brown bears that entered a garage last Friday (6-7-24) in the Jamestown Drive area.
Shortly before 1 p.m. on June 7, Martha Greba was returning home from a puppy training class with her two dogs – her twelve year old Australian Shepherd Gracie and Sailor, a six month old puppy who had given Greba a scare several days before when she ran off.
“The trainer said you have to be very careful with Sailor because she doesn’t have that fear, and she doesn’t have a good enough recall to let her off leash,” Greba said. “And we thought okay, we’re gonna do that.”
Greba and her husband Keith pulled into their driveway, and her husband got out of the car with Sailor on a leash. Gracie jumped out of the car and made her way to the waterfall near their house to get a drink. On the other side of the creek where Gracie was drinking stood a sow and two yearling bear cubs, about 20 feet away.
“When I look over, they’re on a pile of garbage, and they look at me, and one of them starts down the bank,” Greba said. “And Gracie’s a bit deaf, and I start screaming at her, and she’s oblivious, because she’s going down to get her drink. And I’m deathly afraid of bears, and I don’t even know how I responded, but I was able to get her, and get her in the garage, and Keith was able to get the puppy inside and get his gun.”
By that time, the bears were in their front yard next to their firepit.
“Keith fired a shot in the air because…she’s got to go away, and she’s not backing down at all,” Greba said of the sow. “She’s just fearless and keeps staring at us.”
After a few minutes, the bears headed back down toward the creek, off of Greba’s property and back to the garbage pile, and Greba was able to contact law enforcement. A state wildlife trooper and a local police officer responded, and found the two cubs and sow at a neighboring home. According to the trooper report, the bears had entered the attached garage through an open door and ransacked the space to access the garbage inside. Because they entered a residence and were behaving aggressively, the bears were deemed a risk to public safety.
Fish and Game Biologist Steve Bethune says these bears may have behaved aggressively toward Greba’s dog because they were protecting the nearby garage as a food source.
“We’ve had previous issues with a homeowner’s garbage handling practices in that neighborhood that may have led to the bears being attracted to this neighborhood,” Bethune said. “We also had a bear in prior years that broke into a garage that we were never able to locate. So whether it’s the same bear or not is impossible to tell, but it’s certainly in the back of my mind.”
Greba says she hopes her harrowing experience will encourage Sitkans to be vigilant and attentive of their surroundings.
“I truly was not even thinking ‘there ‘bear’ today after the other bear was killed,” she said. “I thought okay, that was a problem bear [that’s] gone,” Greba said. “We just need to be bear aware, and keep our garbage up and keep our dogs and pets safe, and just be aware.”
Four bears have been put down by law enforcement in Sitka this summer. The first bear was shot on Guertin Island on June 5 after killing two dogs.
