The Bear of 2015: The County's Visitor, at This City's Distance

June to October 2015; the journal record, 2018

Chapman's list had the black bear gone from this county before 1880. In the summer of 2015 the county had one again — for five months, on its western side, at a measured distance from this city, which the entry keeps. The Indiana DNR's release of 12 June 2015 documents the return: reports of a black bear came in on 6 and 9 June from St. Joseph County, northwest of South Bend, and on 11 June a DNR biologist, Budd Veverka, confirmed the animal from its scat — the first black bear confirmed in Indiana since 1871. The bear was a young male, understood to have come down from Michigan. He stayed about five months in Indiana, moving through the state's northwestern counties, and was last reported on 13 October 2015; he denned that winter in Michigan. The scientific account — Westrich, McCallen, and Albers of the Indiana DNR, in Human–Wildlife Interactions (2018) — frames the episode as the first of two: two black bears confirmed in Indiana in the summers of 2015 and 2016, after more than a century's absence. The 2015 bear "encountered a public and management agency unaccustomed to living with large carnivores," was fed, intentionally and unintentionally, became habituated, and was euthanized in April 2016 — the outcome the DNR's education campaign of 2016 was built to avoid repeating. Mishawaka's position in the episode is stated exactly: the documented course of the bear ran through the county's western and northern ground and out through LaPorte County toward Michigan; no report, confirmation, or incident on Mishawaka or Penn Township ground appears in the DNR release or in the journal account reached. What stands here is a county event at county strength: the largest wild animal of Chapman's departed list walked St. Joseph County again within living memory of this build — and passed this city by.

Principal sources

1. Indiana Department of Natural Resources release, 12 June 2015 (events.in.gov), and the Department's black bear account — the 6 and 9 June reports northwest of South Bend; the 11 June scat confirmation by Budd Veverka; first confirmed in Indiana since 1871.
2. Bradford J. Westrich, Emily B. McCallen, and Geriann Albers, "Black Bears Recolonizing Historic Ranges: Indiana Human–Bear Interactions," Human–Wildlife Interactions 12(3) (2018), pp. 411–416 — the two bears of 2015 and 2016; the first bear's habituation and euthanasia; the 2016 education response.