260-pound black bear trapped near Downtown Pittsburgh

The Pennsylvania Game Commission trapped a 260-pound black bear Wednesday morning next to a Lower Hill District dumpster near Downtown Pittsburgh.

A sighting of the bear was first reported Dec. 6 in the 5700 block of Penn Avenue, but it disappeared, said Douglas Bergman, a game commission warden covering Allegheny County.

Then, within the past week, the bruin was reported raiding dumpsters at the Energy Innovation Center along the Lower Hill’s Bedford Avenue and the nearby Boy Scouts building, he said.

The managers of the innovation center discovered that their dumpster was broken into and used video surveillance to discover that a bear was eating the trash, Bergman said.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission trapped a 200-pound bear next to a dumpster in the Energy Innovation Center’s parking lot along Bedford Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh Wednesday morning. pic.twitter.com/TRLSpiZyDR

— Mary Ann Thomas (@MaThomas_Trib) December 22, 2021

Footage captured the bear on top of the bin. With its weight, the animal was able to push in the plastic lid to reach the trash.

“He couldn’t have gone further into the city than this,” Bergman said, with the U.S. Steel Tower and the Route 279 bridge in the background.

The public did not see the bear as it raided at least two bins, then took cover on the wooded hillside of Bigelow Boulevard, he said.

While black bears have been spotted moving around the city before, this is the first time in recent memory one was living in the city, said Bergman, who has been a warden in the area since 2015.

The bear has been foraging and living on the wooded hillside above Bigelow Boulevard, he said. There was bear scat around the bin with wild berries that grow in abundance in the wooded sliver along Bigelow Boulevard that begins in the parking lot of Energy Innovation Center.

Douglas Bergman, a game warden with the Pennsylvania Game Commission, explains how a black bear was living for several weeks In the City of Pittsburgh in December of 2021. pic.twitter.com/sKvdm8LmaA

— Mary Ann Thomas (@MaThomas_Trib) December 22, 2021

On Friday, Bergman set an approximately 10-foot-long, steel cylinder trap baited with donuts and some meat.

The bear twice retrieved the bait without triggering the trap on Friday and Saturday. Bergman made some modifications to the trap and caught the bear sometime Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.

The bear was awake and relaxed in the trap before Bergman took the trap about 8:30 a.m. Wednesday to Somerset County to release the bear.

After Bergman tranquilized the bear to check its health, he found the male weighed about 260 pounds and was healthy and in good shape.

While many bears are hibernating this time of year, this bear stayed in the area because it had a food source and the weather was mild, Bergman said.