When the spring thaw comes and the sheltered animals emerge from their winter dens, one critter that probably won’t be among them — Seymour’s black bear.
The bear made headlines in the spring of 2008 when he appeared around town poking in people’s backyards. Where he is now is anybody’s guess.
“If we look at sightings we could conjecture where he is. It is not unreasonable for him to be in Massachusetts or New York state,” said Paul Rego, the wildlife biologist who specializes in bears for the state Department of Environmental Protection.
The Seymour bear was apparently a young male.
Rather than being a sign that bears are returning to the Naugatuck Valley, it was a sign that bear populations in the northern part of the state were growing and causing the young males to go out on their own to seek out food and mates, away from the competition of older and more experienced male bears, Rego said.
Connecticut has perhaps 300 to 500 black bears, though, Rego said. They are in their winter dens now, which could be as simply as a rocky crevice or some thick brush.
DEP sighting records show there were a total of 2,972 black bear sightings in the state in the past year, but few if any in the Naugatuck Valley. Seymour had none. Even woodsy Oxford had none. Ansonia had one and neighboring Woodbridge had one. Waterbury, meanwhile, had 11 and suburban Newtown had 19.
It startled the heck out of Seymour residents at the time though.
“Here is what was scary to me, what would have happened if there was a kid sitting in the backyard and that bear was hungry?,” said John Costello, who is one of the residents who spotted the bear. It was in a pond near Swan Avenue when he saw it, said Costello, who is the owner of See More Floors.
“I heard sirens, and everybody on Woodside came. I took a ride over, and sure enough, there was a big black bear swimming in a pond,” Costello said.
Marlene and Donald Vinci of Woodcrest Road initially reported the black bear that spring and called local newspapers.
“We haven’t seen him. We wondered what happened to him,” Donald Vinci said Friday, as he stood on his back porch and pointed to the bushes in his backyard where the black bear was spotted.
Local residents figured the bear had gone on to greener pastures. It is highly unlikely he was poached, said the DEP biologist. Rather, he probably made his way to a place where there are females, and more food.
That could easily be New York. Bears can travel 12 miles a day, if not more.
Bears after all, are the wandering kind.
“It’s part of bear biology for young males to wander. There are different theories on why they do that,” Rego said. “During the middle of the summer, their mating season, is when there is a lot of movement by male bears.”
