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“He’s getting acclimated to a new location,” Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Communications Director Dennis Schain told The Daily Voice.
DEEP tranquillized the bear cub Thursday and took it away in a pickup. It had had spent the day touring about Greenfield Hill and the University area before ending up in a tree on Denise Terrace.
Schain declined to say which town the bear now calls home.
But Schain said it was moved to the closest suitable wooded area and is most likely doing fine.
“Bears generally take pretty well to tranquilization,” he said, explaining that the dart sedates them long enough for professionals to assess their condition.
The cub caused quite a stir on social media Thurday, prompting tweets from onlookers, police and First Selectman Mike Tetreau.
Tetreau has not tweeted about the bear since retweeting a picture of the bear in the tree. And there has been no further sightings of bears in the area, although two bear reports were made Thursday in Westport as well.
Although Schain said bears are less common in suburban Fairfield County than the northwest corner of the state, he said the Connecticut bear population is branching out as young bears need to find their own territories.
Sightings are also occurring because bears are particularly active this time of the year, Schain said.
“They’re looking for food and love,” he noted, adding that Connecticut bears are still in mating season.
Although Schain advises onlookers to keep their distance from bears, he said not all bears need to be tranquilized and relocated.
Since bears were rooted out of the state by the mid-1980s, they have “made a comeback” in recent years, according to DEEP’s website.
Their populations have grown as farmers abandoned farmland during the late 1800s.
Since the 1980s “annual sighting reports have increased dramatically, indicating a rapid increase in the bear population,” according to the DEEP website.
Residents have spotted bears in a number of other towns this spring and summer, including Danbury, Darien, Norwalk and Greenwich.
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