Biologists for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department captured and relocated a subadult female grizzly bear Wednesday after it killed cattle on a U.S. Forest Service grazing allotment north of Pinedale. 

In cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Shoshone National Forest, the bear was relocated to the Five Mile Creek drainage approximately 5 miles from the east entrance of Yellowstone National Park.

“Relocation is a management tool afforded to large carnivore biologists to minimize conflicts between humans and grizzly bears and is critical to the management of the population,” the Game and Fish said in a Monday press release.

When other options are exhausted or unattainable, Game and Fish will attempt to capture the bear. Once the animal is captured, all circumstances are taken into account when determining if the individual should be relocated or removed from the population. Bears deemed a threat to human safety are not relocated.

If relocation is warranted, the selection of a relocation site is determined taking into consideration the age, sex, and type of conflict the bear was involved in as well as potential human activity in the vicinity of the relocation site.

Game and Fish continues to stress the importance of the public’s responsibility in bear management and the importance of keeping all attractants (food items, garbage, horse feed, bird seed and others) unavailable to bears. Reducing attractants available to bears reduces human-bear conflicts, the department says.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, nine grizzly bears have been euthanized this year inside the Demographic Monitoring Area (DMA), an area classified as suitable habitat in and around Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. Another 10 grizzlies have been euthanized outside the DMA.

The number of bears relocated by the three state agencies is not regularly reported by the USGS