Sullivan County – Matt Rinker believes the Pennsylvania Game Commission needs to be held accountable for the way a game warden handled a roadkilled bear near his home in Sullivan County.
The agency, however, said policy was followed and they’re standing by the warden.
The scenario began on Aug. 11 when a bear was hit by a vehicle and killed on state Route 87 near Hillsgrove. Rinker, who resides nearby, said other motorists drug the bear off the road and the PGC was contacted. The next day, Game Warden Rick Finnegan and a deputy arrived at the scene, and Rinker said his brother, Chris, approached the warden and offered to help lift the bear onto their vehicle.
“They told him they didn’t need his help and he left, thanking them for removing the bear,” Rinker said. “They indicated they would put it on the (vehicle) carrier and everything would be fine.”
The next day, however, Rinker noticed an odor in the area, and over the next three days it grew stronger. He investigated the source of the smell and discovered the bear, which hadn’t been removed and was decomposing.
“They pushed it onto my dad’s property. They rolled it down a steep embankment about 20 feet onto his property,” Rinker said. “My parents are 89 years old and it was 200 feet from their house and other houses.”
Rinker said he contacted Finnegan and the warden told him the bear couldn’t be removed because it was stuck under the guard rail. Rinker said he asked that the bear be removed because of the odor and it was near a stream, but the warden refused. A subsequent call by Rinker to the PGC’s Northeast Region Office in Dallas led to a resolution when, six days after the bear had been killed on the road, two deputy game wardens arrived to move it. Rinker said the bear at that time was so badly decomposed that it couldn’t be drug. His family assisted the removal with a tractor equipped with a loader, and he added the carcass was moved to a more remote section of his father’s property where odor wouldn’t be an issue.
“I never smelled anything like it. Just horrible,” Rinker said. “It would’ve been much nicer to do this when the bear was on the road and not decomposed.”
The Game Commission maintains several “pits” on game lands throughout the state that are used for disposal of roadkilled animals. The nearest disposal pit to Hillsgrove is on State Game Lands 57 in Wyoming County, but sometimes roadkilled animals are simply moved away from the road and left rather than hauled away.
However, according to PGC Communications Director Travis Lau in an email, it’s extremely rare that a roadkilled bear isn’t removed from the site, and leaving it is not a common practice.
Lau also wrote that “It is arguably a good idea to make an attempt to contact the landowner to appraise him/her of the situation and inquire if they have any alternate means of removal at their disposal.”
Bill Williams, information and education supervisor for the PGC’s Northeast Region, said factors determining when to remove a bear, or not, include feasibility, officer safety, location of the animal and relative remoteness of the area. Officers are given broad discretion over what course of action to take, he said.
Williams said the bear near Hillsgrove weighed approximately 500 pounds, which is too heavy to safely transport of carriers equipped to the back of agency vehicles.
“It affects the drivability of the vehicle, and we’ve had officers injured trying to hoist a large bear onto the rack or drag it off the road,” Williams said.
“The officers involved in this situation did not violate any Game Commission policies or procedures, and their actions were reasonable.”
Williams added that the bear was hundreds of yards away from any home, and it was near a dry culvert and not a stream. In response to the social media backlash resulting from the incident, Williams said Finnegan is an “outstanding and dedicated” game warden.
“I find it disturbing and unfortunate that these officers are under assault by a small element that seems to be bent on tarnishing their reputation through social and other media platforms,” Williams said.
For his part, Rinker acknowledged while the bear has been taken care of, the problem hasn’t been resolved. He said it’s disappointing that the Game Commission discarded the bear on his father’s property without seeking permission, and he will contact local legislators for their help in crafting or changing policies to prevent future incidents.
“I don’t want this to happen to us or anyone else again,” Rinker said. “The Game Commission needs to take responsibility and they owe us an apology, especially my elderly parents who had to deal with this.”
Williams encouraged anyone with concerns over how an incident was handled to contact the region office. In this instance, he said, the agency reacted to the complaint and moved the bear to a location that was suitable to the property owners.
“There was no intent to do harm. If we can learn from anything, we’ll do that,” Williams said. “In this case, we had a number of complaints that spurred the effort to move this bear.”
- This story originally appeared in The Citizens’ Voice.
