OAK RIDGE (New Jersey), Aug 19 — The first time Greg Macgowan’s wife saw the bear near their home, the upper half of the animal’s body was obscured by a neighbour’s deck. “She said, ‘Come here — there’s a guy in a bear suit,'” he recalled.
It turned out to be a real bear, but one that differed from the typical backyard visitor searching for food or wishing to cool off in a pool. This one walked almost entirely upright.
Now, two summers later, many more residents in this largely rural swath of northern New Jersey have spotted the Garden State Sasquatch, a bipedal bear nicknamed Pedals, who has his own Facebook fan page. It has, of course, made him a global sensation.
With two maimed front legs, Pedals, an American black bear who displays remarkably good posture, manages to get around on his hind legs. His unusual condition has spawned coveted sightings and viral videos. “Pedals is my spirit animal,” one person wrote on Facebook.
But the wandering bear has also inspired a fierce debate, between those who would put him in a wildlife sanctuary and those who would leave him be.
The fascination with the bipedal bear comes as New Jersey grapples with a large bear population, which has grown steadily since the 1980s. There are now an estimated 2,500 bears north of Interstate 80, and the state introduced a hunting season several years ago to manage the ursine population.
For the most part, bears and humans coexist without problems. But two years ago, a 22-year-old Rutgers student was killed by a 300-pound black bear as he hiked with friends in nearby West Milford. This summer, residents have reported a number of run-ins, including a bear that swam laps in a backyard pool in Mendham and a bear that charged at a Vernon woman outside her house.
While most bears roaming through the area are met with fear, or even indifference, the bipedal bear has provoked the opposite reaction, with both local residents and a worldwide internet audience becoming passionate, protective and, most of all, opinionated.
The group that wants to intervene on the bear’s behalf started a petition, collecting 309,000 signatures from places as varied as Indiana and Italy. The petition called on state wildlife officials to capture the bear and send him to a sanctuary in New York state that was ready to take him.
Supporters also raised more than US$25,000 (RM1 million) to help pay for a new enclosure there. They commiserated on the Facebook page “Pedals the Injured Bipedal Bear.” A typical plea came this summer from Angie Mason, of North Yorkshire, in England: “I feel sick every time I see a picture,” she said. “He must be in agony. How would we feel walking on all fours for three years?”
Others feel just as strongly that humans should keep their hands off. According to state wildlife biologists, the bear is doing fine on his own; they estimated his weight at 300 to 350 pounds, though they do not know his age. They believe the bear is a male based on his size and images captured on video.
After a new video of the bear surfaced in June, showing him walking purposefully but cautiously between houses here, the state’s Division of Fish and Wildlife explained its position in an update on its website.
“Division biologists note that, based on the video, the bear is active, appears healthy, a little larger than last year, and is thriving on its own having adapted to its condition,” the post said.
“The bear was able to find adequate food resources in an area of high bear density and to have successfully denned through at least the past two winters in its current condition,” the post said. “Therefore, there is no need for intervention at this time.”
It is unclear how the bear was injured. A former state wildlife biologist speculated in 2014, when the bear was first spotted, that it was hit by a car. But the bear may also have a congenital defect; in various videos, the right front leg appears truncated, while the left paw dangles.
“Other than the videos, we haven’t been able to get a close look at him,” said Larry Hajna, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, adding that biologists did not see a need to perform an examination of the bear.
In an interview posted on YouTube last month, Tracy Leaver, the founder and executive director of Woodlands Wildlife Refuge in Alexandria Township, New Jersey, said the desire to help the bear was understandable, but misguided. She explained that he had clearly managed to find food and a den during successive winters, despite his limited mobility.
“That’s what wildlife does,” she said. “They survive. He’s over it. We’re not, as people. We want to reach in, we want to help, we want to fix him.”
“Life is wonderful for this animal right now,” she added. “There’s plenty of natural food. To take that bear out of that beautiful home range that he’s been living successfully in, and put him in an enclosure anywhere, would be like imprisoning him.”
Macgowan, a database administrator and father of four here, first captured the bear in a grainy video in 2014, when Pedals crossed through his neighbour’s yard. This summer, his family watched as the bear collected berries from a swampy area behind his property and then shook some crabapples from a tree.
“He’s doing fine in the wild,” Macgowan said. “He just does it on two legs. I think nature is best left where it is.”
State officials, in the meantime, say that Pedals has helped put wildlife in New Jersey on the world map — a nice change of pace for a state known to carry a chip on its shoulder.
“It’s very compelling,” Hajna said. “This is a very resilient bear. He’s really captured the attention and hearts of a lot of people.”
