Arkansas officials have shot and killed a male black bear, which they believe was responsible for the fatal mauling of a 60-year-old Missouri man at his campsite in the Ozark National Forest last week.
Authorities confirmed the animal’s death on Monday.
The victim, identified as Max Thomas of Springfield, Missouri, was discovered deceased on Thursday.
His body was found several yards outside the Sam’s Throne campground in the remote northwest of Arkansas, according to Newton County Sheriff Glenn Wheeler.
A deputy was dispatched to the campground after Mr Thomas’s son reported he had not heard from his father.
Notably, Mr Thomas had sent his family pictures of a black bear in his camp on Tuesday morning, Sheriff Wheeler added.
Upon arrival, the deputy found compelling evidence of a struggle and injury at the scene, including distinct drag marks leading from the campground into the surrounding woods, the sheriff detailed.
“We believe he was in the process of breaking down his camp when the attack occurred,” Sheriff Wheeler stated. The state medical examiner’s office subsequently determined the man’s death to be an “animal mauling.”
On Sunday, a bear was caught on a trail camera near the campground that appeared to be the same animal photographed by the victim and encountered by another man at a roadside overlook in the area, Wheeler said.
Local hunters and hounds were brought into the area and quickly tracked the bear, which was killed and transported to Little Rock, where authorities will obtain DNA samples to confirm it is the bear that fatally attacked the man.
âWe knew the bear in the photos was a male and this one is too,â Wheeler said in a press release. âIt matches the size of the photographed bear and has the same facial colorations. Not to mention it was back in the same area where the attack happened.â
It is the second fatal bear attack in Arkansas in recent weeks. In September, a 72-year-old man died after being attacked by a bear in nearby Franklin County, according to authorities with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
Despite the recent attacks, Don White Jr., a large mammal ecologist at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, said fatal bear attacks in Arkansas are âexceedingly rare.â
The last confirmed fatal bear attack in Arkansas was in 1892, said Keith Stephens, a spokesperson for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
Although black bears were common in Arkansas before European settlement, the numbers dwindled to fewer than 50 by the 1930s, White said.
Those numbers have continued to climb since the reintroduction of hundreds of black bears into the Ouachita and Ozark mountains of Arkansas in the 1950s and 1960s, with an estimated 5,000 black bears in the state now, although White said that figure is difficult to pinpoint.
