Cape Cod Bear Captured In Brookline, Massachusetts

By Ros Krasny

BOSTON (Reuters) - He's baaack: A male black bear captured on Cape Cod earlier this month, where it was tranquilized and moved to central Massachusetts, showed up again on Tuesday just six miles from downtown Boston.

State officials said they had captured the bear in a tree in the Chestnut Hill area of Brookline, just west of Boston, and confirmed it was the same bear which roamed the Cape for about two weeks before being captured and relocated on June 12.

The bear was identified by a tag placed in its ear. It had probably traveled about 100 miles.

"Because this bear was in a highly congested urban area, an interagency Large Animal Response Team was deployed to the area," said the Massachusetts' wildlife agency, known as MassWildlife.

The 180-pound bear was then shot with a tranquilizer dart by the Environmental Police. Later, MassWildlife officials transported the animal to a remote location in western Massachusetts, about 150 miles away.

The agency said that black bear sightings have been reported in a number of towns west and south of Boston recently but could not confirm that all sightings were the same bear.

The Boston Globe reported that the bear was spotted in a white pine tree in the backyard of Alan Leventhal, chief executive of Beacon Capital Partners, one of the largest real estate investment trusts in the United States, and on Boston University's Board of Trustees.

The Brookline Police Department tweeted photographs of the bear in the tree, with a caption that was a twist on the classic children's book "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See":

"Black bear, black bear what do you see? I see Brookline police looking at me."

The so-called Cape Cod bear was first spotted May 27 in the Cape Cod area, the easternmost part of the state. State wildlife officials think the bear swam across the Cape Cod Canal from the mainland.

The Massachusetts bear population was last estimated at 3,000 in 2005, with most bears in northwest and western parts of the state, including the Berkshires region.

The black bear population has been slowly growing and expanding its range into eastern and southeastern Massachusetts, state officials said. Of the three species of bear found in North America, the American black bear is the smallest.

(Reporting By Ros Krasny)