{"id":847619,"date":"2026-09-14T15:40:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T15:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/847619\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T15:40:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T15:40:11","slug":"wildlife-department-catches-bear-after-4-day-romp-through-gallup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/847619\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildlife Department catches bear after 4-day romp through Gallup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wildlife Department catches bear after 4-day romp through Gallup<\/p>\n

Wildlife officials safely contained a bear after its four-day trek through Gallup prompted officials to cancel youth events and soccer games.<\/p>\n

\"Eliezer<\/p>\n

Digital Assignment Editor<\/p>\n

The Wildlife Department darted and contained a bear on Saturday that had been traveling freely through Gallup throughout the week, Gallup police said.<\/p>\n

The bear had moved from the east side of the city into central Gallup over four days before wildlife officials contained the bear on Saturday, Chief Erin Toadlena-Pablo told KOAT 7 on Sunday. <\/p>\n

RELATED: New Mexico Department of Wildlife captures a bear Sunday in northwest Albuquerque<\/a><\/p>\n

Bear sightings in the city led to canceling youth events and soccer games, Toadlena-Pablo said, adding that it was the first time in her 26 years of service that a bear had made its way into the center of town. <\/p>\n

The plan was to “relocate” the bear, possibly to the mountainous McGaffey area southeast of the city. <\/p>\n

The police chief advised residents to be aware of wildlife and to be mindful of articles left outside. <\/p>\n

School would be back in session on Monday, Toadlena-Pablo said. <\/p>\n

See Gallup Police video of the bear here<\/a>. <\/p>\n

New Mexico saw an uptick in bear encounters in populated areas in 2026, including one fatal attack<\/a> on the Navajo Nation.<\/p>\n

Experts have attributed the increase in encounters to drought, the availability of food in human areas like fruit and trash, and a steady increase in the bear population over the last several years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wildlife Department catches bear after 4-day romp through Gallup Wildlife officials safely contained a bear after its four-day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":847620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[35296,7438,85534,19122,7053,15229,23602,299,45697,358566,23992,30026,275320,358565,301004,6318,79,8915,201,166366],"class_list":["post-847619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-availability","tag-bear","tag-bear-attack","tag-bears","tag-city","tag-drought","tag-encounter","tag-food","tag-gallup","tag-human-area","tag-increase","tag-koat","tag-navajo-nation","tag-new-mexico-bears","tag-new-mexico-department","tag-saturday","tag-science","tag-sunday","tag-wildlife","tag-wildlife-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=847619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/847620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}