At least two bear sightings in and around the Santa Clarita Valley Thursday night has local sheriff’s deputies on alert.
Shortly after 9:40 p.m. Thursday a video was posted online showing a black bear running along a fence in Valencia on The Old Road near Henry Mayo Drive. The video was posted on the sheriff’s Facebook page.
Deputies with the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station were dispatched shortly before 8:40 p.m. Thursday to the area where they spotted the bear running along a fence by the side of the road.
“Apparently, the deputies went out there and chased the bear back into the wilderness area,” Lt. Doug Mohrhoff told The Signal Friday morning.
The bear was last seen in the area of the Higher Vision Church on The Old Road near Henry Mayo Drive.
It was the second call deputies received word of on Friday of a bear sighting.
Earlier in the day, around 5 p.m., officers with the California Highway Patrol reported a black bear seen near Interstate 5 and Highway 138, near Gorman.
Asked if it could have been the same bear, Mohrhoff said he believed that was unlikely, noting the earlier sighting reported the bear as small.
CHP officers responding to the earlier bear sighting were notified by their dispatcher that the smaller bear might be a cub.
Reports of a bear being seen by the Oak Tree Gun Club, on Coltrane Avenue, could not be confirmed.
“I’m not releasing any of that information,” said a woman who answered the phone in the club’s shotgun section Friday morning.
The gun club is about eight miles from Henry Mayo Drive.
“The sheriff’s department did a great job on this,” said Andrew Hughan, spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Spotting bears in the SCV is not unusual, he said.
“It’s not uncommon really, this little guy was out looking into trash cans and looking for a snack,” Hughan said about the bear.
“There are bears in SCV and they will almost always leave people alone but I do want to remind people that these are wild animal and, especially, if a young one is around it’s mother is usually not far away and would be very unhappy to see a person near her young,” he said.
And, as a last bit of advice, Hughan issued a warning: “Don’t ‘help’ or feed wildlife, ever.”
Anyone wanting more information, he said, is urged to visit the Keep Me Wild website.
661-287-5527
on Twitter @jamesarthurholt
