The town of Jackson, Wyoming, could bear-ly believe it when a local ursine celebrity visited the town.
A grizzly bear, known as Grizzly No. 399, visited the town of Jackson on Wednesday, trailed by her four cubs. The Jackson Police Department then posted a video featuring 399 and her cubs approaching the department and wandering around the site.
“We had some visitors last night. #399 and her Cubs swung by to say hi,” wrote the police department on its Facebook page.
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Police and Wildlife Service officials eventually shooed the animals into a less populated area, a spokesperson for the police department said.
Named for the tag hanging from her ear, 399 has become familiar to the town due to the female bear’s tendency to linger near roads in Grand Teton National Park, attracting the attention of locals and tourists alike.
On Sunday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, and other local agencies announced an effort to “mitigate further human-bear conflict” and to “#keepbearswild.”
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The USFWS says that “there has been a significant increase in the frequency of the five bears lingering near human residences and accessing human sources of food, including apiculture beehives, unsecured animal feed, and garbage.”
As such, the agency is striving to keep 399 away from humans whenever possible in the hopes of preventing a violent encounter.
These efforts included placing radio collars on three of 399’s cubs and encouraging Jackson residents to store trash, pumpkins, and bird feeders out of the bears’ reach.
