And then there were four, again.
Hanover and Lebanon first responders completed the roundup of Mink the black bear’s latest brood of cubs on Saturday morning, capturing the two who on Friday had eluded the state, town and federal officials working to stop the family from foraging for food in and around the town’s human habitat.
A team of wildlife experts and Hanover firefighters had trapped Mink and two of the cubs on Friday, relocated the mother to the wilds of northernmost Coos County and moved the two captured cubs to the preserve in Lyme, where naturalist Ben Kilham rehabilitates cubs for return to the wild.
Overnight, Hanover Deputy Fire Chief Michael Hinsley stayed near the tree near Mink Brook where the two fugitive cubs were sheltering, in hopes of discouraging predators. He said that come Saturday morning, one cub strayed into a trap that New Hampshire wildlife had set for the youngsters, while the other was spotted bolting across Mink Brook and into West Lebanon, just west of Route 10.
Finally, Hinsley and members of the Lebanon Fire Department tracked the fourth cub to a house on Scott Avenue, where she hid under a rhododendron bush. Hinsley said that firemen and neighbors encircled the bush with snow fence, and after Hinsley flushed it into the open. A Hanover firefighter lifted it by the scruff of the neck and placed it in the trap.
Later, in an enclosure at Kilham’s center in Lyme, the three previous captives greeted their little sister “and made this bear-cub group, sitting there like you’d normally find them along the Mink Brook corridor,” Hinsley said. Later in the day, they were climbing around their enclosure.
While praising Hanover and West Lebanon residents for their diligence in removing bird feeders and other temptations that draw bears into human territory, Hinsley warned that neighbors need to remain vigilant now that Mink is out of sight and out of mind.
“There are multiple other adult sows in downtown Hanover and along the Mink Brook corridor,” Hinsley said. “Minimum of three.”
In May 2017, wildlife officials considered euthanizing Mink and three of her yearling cubs, before relocating the cubs to the northern wilds.