In the height of summer tourism season in 2024, a family of bears was euthanized in the heart of an Adirondack hamlet. WAMC's Andrew Waite spoke with Adirondack Explorer reporter Brianna Kimmel about the tensions — and solutions — that followed. A transcript is below:
Andrew Waite: The headline of the piece that you have is "What Old Forge residents learned from the public euthanization of a bear family." So that's a pretty intriguing headline. I want to start just if you could: set the scene for us. What is the hamlet of Old Forge like for people who have never been there?
Brianna Kimmel: The first thing that you see when you come into town is the water safari, which is the big water park, and then as you continue down Main Street, it's sort of like every other storefront is a souvenir shop, and then down by the water, there's a lot of motels, inns, cabins. So it definitely seems to me like a tourist-oriented hamlet.
Andrew Waite: Yeah, it's very focused on visitors coming specifically in the summer, maybe in the fall too, for some of the fall foliage. And yet, all around town, villagers are going to encounter signs that basically say ‘don't feed the wildlife’ Right? What's an example of this?
Brianna Kimmel: So there are three different classes of them. The first classes are the DEC signs, which are the basic brown and yellow that you'll see across the park. The next type of sign that people might see says ‘keep our wildlife wild’ on the top, and then the bottom half says, ‘feeding or harassing wildlife could result in a fine up to $1,000.’ The third class of signs are these kind of cartoon images, drawings, of a bear, a deer, a raccoon, and a duck, and it says, ‘I am not a pet. Please don't feed me’. And so, there's a lot of those down by the waterfront and outside of the Old Forge Visitor Center.
Andrew Waite: And all of this stems from a 2024 incident, right? So, wondering if you can take us back to that time. When did this get started?
Brianna Kimmel: So, during the summer of 2024, there were several calls to the DEC and to Town of Webb officials that a trio of bears, a sow and her two cubs were frequenting campgrounds on the outskirts of the hamlet in search of food scraps, garbage, anything. There was one morning in August where they were seen just kind of moseying around the lawns of different shops in downtown Old Forge on Main Street.
Andrew Waite: And in the height of summer, I mean, August is peak tourism season, and you have these bears roaming around downtown. So, what happened from there?
Brianna Kimmel: You know, this sow being a mother with her two cubs, it was clear she was starting to feel threatened by the proximity that these people were getting so close to her and her, her cubs, and so the three bears ended up running up a tree behind Old Forge Hardware, which is right in the dead center of town. It's right next to a big public parking lot. Really, is an incredibly public place, and more onlookers started to gather around and you know take pictures, kind of yell at the bears. There were reports that people were throwing apples at them. Town of Webb officials are at this point aware of what's going on, so officials are downtown at the scene. They're trying to keep people a safe distance away, and they've also informed DEC officials at this point.
Andrew Waite: Then something turned, right? So DEC then determined that these bears needed to be euthanized.
Brianna Kimmel: So, the DEC arrives on scene and are prepared for, you know, a euthanization operation of sorts to take place. So, they come in and they shoot the sow, killing her, and also they shoot one of the cubs. And this cub also died from that shot. The second cub had kind of started to get away and make its way down the tree when the DEC officers shot and injured that cub, but did not kill it, so that cub actually got away for about an hour and a half before they were actually able to, you know, deliver lethal shots.
Andrew Waite: How did people respond? Not just in the moment, but then in the community, in the days and weeks after that.
Brianna Kimmel: Yeah, people were really angry. People were really upset. Generally, it was a lot of anger towards the tourists and visitors that were kind of bothering and inciting anger onto these bears.
Andrew Waite: And so then formally, what kind of responses was there? Was it then the locals demanding some sort of a solution, and that's what led to these signs that you described, basically saying ‘don't feed the animals all around town,’ what was the process from there?
Brianna Kimmel: Yeah, I think out of the anger that a lot of people felt, also came a lot of action, and one of those actionable things was the creation of the nonprofit Keep Our Wildlife Wild, which was started by Kurt Gardner, who is a wildlife photographer, Old Forge native, and he got together with two other Old Forge residents, and they did a lot of work with the Town of Webb Board as well as the DEC to really ramp up this awareness and education on how to deal with bears and how to deal with human bear interactions. And yeah, that resulted in the wildlife feeding prohibition that was passed in Old Forge.
Andrew Waite: Do you think these signs have worked? Do you know how tourists responded to the signs this year?
Brianna Kimmel: Yeah, so I spoke with both Kurt Gardner and the Town of Webb Chief of Police Jason Mulcahy and Chief Mulcahy was able to confirm that no citations had been written since the prohibition has been passed. Kurt mentioned that a lot of Old Forge residents will kind of do their own sort of citizen watch and try and educate visitors.
Andrew Waite: Well, and it strikes me that this is a place that is so, as you said, dependent on its visitors, right? So a lot of its economy really relies on people coming to Old Forge every summer, and this incident specifically in 2024 kind of put the hamlet and the residents there in conflict with the very people who it depends on. Where do you think that stands now?
Brianna Kimmel: I think that initial responses to the bears’ euthanization did place a lot of blame on visitors, but I also think that people in Old Forge, especially community members who reside there, are very aware that they need the tourists, and so I think that Keep Our Wildlife Wild and the Town of Webb and the DEC have all really pushed for awareness and education, especially for visitors, so that people can keep coming and enjoying Old Forge, and it doesn't create this kind of rift between the year-round residents and the people who come and visit for the summer.
This transcript was generated by artificial intelligence and then edited and reviewed for accuracy by WAMC staff.
