JACKSON, Wyo. — Surveillance footage captured a celebrity grizzly bear family strolling through a northwestern Wyoming city’s downtown on Tuesday night.
Grizzly #399, so named for the ear tag she received when trapped temporarily for a wildlife study several years ago, is often seen shepherding her four cubs in and around Grand Teton National Park, KTVQ reported.
Video, posted to Facebook by the Jackson Hole Police Department, shows the mama bear and her cubs strolling past the police department, county courthouse, town hall and jail, the Jackson Hole News & Guide reported.
According to the newspaper, however, the famous sow bear and her four half-grown cubs - the “focus of an intensive, ongoing surveillance effort intended to keep them out of trouble and alive” - spent much of October on an “extended walkabout through southern Jackson Hole,” overwhelming staffers at the Wyoming Game and Fish Department” with calls from local residents unsure of protocol for encountering the ursine family.
“That revered 25-year-old bear has spent more time outside Grand Teton National Park than within the protected landscape since summer, and her travels through places like Josies Ridge, Tribal Trails and Hoback Junction are proving problematic,” the News & Guide reported on Oct. 27.
According to USA Today, biologists speculate that keeping in closer proximity to people helps keep away male grizzlies, which are known to kill cubs.
Grizzlies in the Yellowstone region are federally protected under the Endangered Species Act. Their numbers have rebounded from 100 or so in the early 1970s to as many as 1,000 today, the newspaper reported.