A Formosan black bear broke into a hut in Chiayi County‘s Dabang Village (達邦), eating canned goods and food from the resident’s refrigerator, the first officially recorded incident of its kind in the area, local authorities said on Thursday.
Personnel were dispatched to inspect the site and set up trail cameras to track the bear after receiving a report on Wednesday, the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency’s Chiayi branch said in a statement.
The agency released photos showing an open refrigerator, broken eggs in a carton, and empty food cans inside the hut in Dabang, which sits high in the mountains at an elevation of 1,190m.
Photo courtesy of the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency
Specialists found tracks near the hut and, based on the damaged canned food, concluded that a Formosan black bear was responsible, the agency said.
Alishan is an area where Formosan black bears are occasionally sighted, but Wednesday’s incident was the first officially recorded case of a bear entering a resident’s hut, according to the agency, which is part of the Ministry of Agriculture.
Over the past three years, Formosan black bears have been spotted five times near the southern end of the Tefuye Historic Trail (特富野古道), about 10km from Dabang, with the most recent sighting occurring just 500m from the trail in October last year, according to a news release by the agency three weeks ago.
People hiking in the area are urged to carry noisemakers and bear spray to deter bears, while the agency has distributed bear repellent gear to local residents following Wednesday’s incident, the agency said.
The Tefuye Historic Trail, near Yushan National Park, is a potential habitat for the species, according to Hwang Mei-hsiu (黃美秀), a professor at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology’s Institute of Wildlife Conservation.
The recent sightings of Formosan black bears captured on camera are due to increased monitoring and do not represent unusual behavior, Hwang said during a Taiwan Public Television Service interview on Dec. 12.