By Perry Smith and Katherine Quezada
A pair of Department of Fish and Wildlife officials steered a black bear from a tree outside a Castaic apartment complex Monday, using bursts of noise from small bullhorns as guides while Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station deputies monitored a growing crowd of curious onlookers.
By the afternoon, the black bear had ambled its way toward Castaic Lake Recreation Area, which a state Department of Fish and Wildlife official called “encouraging news” Monday afternoon.
Tim Daly, spokesman for the Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the bear, which scrambled up a tree not long after it was spotted, was probably as frightened of a human encounter as a person would be to encounter the bear.
No injuries from the bear’s close encounter with the neighborhood were reported.
Abad Delgado, who manages a property on Violin Canyon Road near where the bear was found, said in Spanish the bear first made an appearance around 7 a.m.
At first, the bear appeared to be resting with a nap after it scrambled up a tree outside apartments on the 27500 block of Violin Canyon.
Daly described the bear’s situation up in the tree as one where they’d just have to “wait and see,” by about noon, adding they didn’t want to “dart” the bear and that a nonlethal trap had been set intending to catch the bear after it came down safely.
“And if that happens, we would then take the bear back to what we described as the ‘nearest suitable habitat,’” he added.
Instead, the bear began to come down from the tree after it woke around 1 p.m. The Fish and Wildlife staff could be seen preparing tranquilizers in case of an emergency, but instead used the blasts of distracting noise to keep nearby residents, and the bear, safe.
The bear went up and down a pair of trees next to the apartment complex before eventually climbing a fence one block west toward Lake Hughes Road, before heading north toward the Castaic Lake Recreation Area.
That ultimately was the goal, Daly said, referring to the area a few hundred feet northeast of the neighborhood.
Violin Canyon Road was closed to through traffic during the incident.
As of nearly 5 p.m., Fish and Wildlife staff were waiting by another tree the bear had climbed up, this time near the southern tip of Castaic Lake.
“If it comes down the tree — it will come down the tree at some point —we will be there,” Daly added in a follow-up call around 5 p.m. “We will be there again, to be a heavy presence, with our vehicles, and our presence, just to be on one side, so the bear feels like going the other direction.”
