Saving one bear is not enough, members of the public told Asheville City Council Tuesday evening.
State government has backed off a plan to kill a bear that entered a North Asheville home Aug. 18 and injured a woman inside. But three residents told Council Tuesday the city needs to do more to prevent similar conflicts between people and bears going forward.
“It’s time we step up and update our response to and for an animal that truly represents … these ancient mountains,” North Asheville resident Liz Thompson told Council.
After the Aug. 18 incident, the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission initially said it was attempting to “capture and humanely dispatch” the bear as well as its cubs. Relocating the adult bear would be ineffective because it would then become a threat elsewhere but it might be possible to move the cubs, depending on their ages, to an undeveloped area, NCWRC said in a press release.
North Asheville resident Hannah Furgiele launched a petition and publicity drive to save the bear. The petition garnered more than 21,500 signatures. She said the state has agreed to temporarily house the adult bear, which Furgiele calls Dolly, at the North Carolina Zoo if Dolly is captured. She hopes Dolly can eventually be sent to a wildlife sanctuary.
Furgiele said Wednesday that NCWRC has captured two of Dolly’s three cubs. A commission spokesperson had not responded to a request for information about the cubs as of deadline for this story.
During City Council’s public comment period Tuesday, residents said more comprehensive measures are needed to protect both bears and people.
“If we don’t have real systemic and infrastructural shifts I think we’re going to keep hearing the same story in Asheville,” Furgiele told Council.
The campaign to save Dolly “is about more than one bear for me, and I hope that we can make some real change in our community,” she said.
Thompson said she has watched both the bear and human populations in North Asheville’s Beaverdam neighborhood increase steadily over four decades and that the city has not done enough to manage the situation.
“Are we going to be proud, pioneering conservationists or will we be known as a city that immediately euthanizes its wildlife because we fail to provide the necessary resources, infrastructure and options to handle the issues humanely?” she asked.
“We are the problem,” North Asheville resident Janice Riordan said. She cited figures from Ashley Hobbs, a biologist with the NCWRC, showing that more than a third of calls to a state hotline to report wildlife problems come from Buncombe County.
Hobbs told the county Board of Commissioners Sept. 15 there have been more than 250 instances of bears entering homes in the county since 2017 and asked commissioners to do more to prevent bear-related issues.
At the Asheville City Council meeting, residents suggested increasing publicity about the need to secure food and garbage so bears can’t get them and designating certain zones where bear-resistant trash cans and dumpsters would be required.
Council took no action Tuesday.
Azalea Road cliff
City Council also heard a plea Tuesday from a representative of an East Asheville housing development for help stabilizing a cliff that abuts Azalea Road. She said the cliff presents a public safety hazard following damage from Tropical Storm Helene.
The cliff is on property owned in common by the residents of ViewPointe but trees and rock that fall from it end up on city-owned Azalea Road, ViewPointe resident Ann Sensibaugh told Council. The road provides access to the WNC Nature Center, John B. Lewis Soccer Park and other destinations.
Bids to fix landslides and other problems Helene visited on the 42-home community range from $3.5 million to $7.8 million, she said, and repairing the cliff accounts for about half the cost which would be a significant burden for residents.
She said a city official’s response to a request for help was, “Well, if anything falls, we’ll help you clean it up.”
Mayor Esther Manheimer suggested a follow-up meeting with city staff. She said other subdivisions “have experienced millions of dollars worth of damage (from Helene) as well and they’ve all handled it in different ways.”
The cliff’s proximity to a public right-of-way creates “a more complex situation,” she said.
More
Video of Tuesday’s meeting is available here and supporting documents and presentations are here. Council will hold a meeting to discuss revitalizing commercial corridors damaged by Helene at 9 a.m. Thursday in the banquet hall at Harrah’s Cherokee Center – Asheville, located at 87 Haywood St. in downtown Asheville. Its next formal meeting will be at 5 p.m. Oct. 13 on the second floor of City Hall.