Animals showing up in odd places because of drought

She drifted into town late last month, close to starvation with sores on her feet.

No one could remember seeing a bear in Goldfield before, but there she was, a walking symbol of drought in the Nevada backcountry.

Wildlife officials said the black bear likely left the parched White Mountains, along the state's western border, and set out across the unfamiliar desert in search of food.

She had to walk more than 60 miles to reach Goldfield, where residents fed her apples and leftover Thanksgiving turkey.

Such unusual wildlife encounters are on the rise across Nevada, including in Las Vegas, where bobcats have been spotted at the Valley Automall and the Mandalay Bay parking lot.

Nevada Department of Wildlife spokesman Doug Nielsen said dry conditions and a lack of prey are driving some predators to seek food in places they would normally avoid, namely golf courses, parks, backyards and other places frequented by people.

"There's not a whole lot of groceries out there on the desert," Nielsen said.

Dr. Gary Weddle, animal control administrator for the city of Henderson, said his staff has seen a 20-fold increase in bobcat calls in the past year.

"These bobcats are just doing what they do for a living. They're in town hunting," Weddle said.

Bears have never been a problem in the Las Vegas Valley, and unless something unexpected happens while the circus is in town, they never should be.

Even in Goldfield, a high-desert town of about 400 people 185 miles north of Las Vegas on U.S. Highway 95, bear encounters are virtually unheard of.

"That's quite a ways out of bear habitat," said Carl Lackey, a biologist for the Nevada Department of Wildlife.

Juanita Colvin has lived in Goldfield for 31 years, and the only bear she has ever seen is the one that showed up in her driveway one morning about three weeks ago.

Later that day, after Colvin thought the animal had wandered off, she heard scratching at her back door.

"When I looked out the window, she was looking in," Colvin said.

Goldfield's longtime justice of the peace, Colvin and her husband eventually fed the bear some leftover turkey.

"What else? It was right after Thanksgiving," Colvin said.

The black bear also spent some time at the home of John Singleton, a corporal with the Esmeralda County Sheriff's Office.

Singleton said the desperately hungry animal apparently tried to claw the tiny fruit off a Joshua tree in his yard, before it wandered off in the direction of Colvin's house.

"I thought it was a cub, it was so small," he said.

Singleton's wife, Heather, fed the bear waffles and apples in Colvin's backyard while they waited for state wildlife officials to arrive.

"She gave the bear her breakfast," Singleton said. "If my wife could have, she would have loaded it up and brought it back home with her."

The bear turned out to be a young adult, though she was considerably underweight for her age.

Lackey said a female black bear usually weighs 100 to 150 pounds in the wild. This one tipped the scales at about 70 pounds.

Hunger and exhaustion seemed to get the better of her, Lackey said.

"We were able to get within 10 feet of her and dart her."

Wildlife officials hauled the tranquilized bear back to Reno, where they fed her for a few days to make sure she had a "full belly," Lackey said.

On Dec. 2, the bear was fitted with a radio tracking collar and released into the Carson Range, where officials hoped she would find plenty of food and water.

The next day, the bear was struck by a car and killed on U.S. Highway 395.

"I doubt she would have made it through the winter anyway. She was pretty thin," Lackey said.

Wayward black bears also have been reported around Caliente and other places far from their traditional ranges.

"We've seen a lot more of these (sightings)," Lackey said.

The recent rash of wildlife reports is more pronounced in the Las Vegas Valley, where sprawl has pushed homes further into the once-wild desert.

"People want to live out on the edge of these beautiful, wide-open spaces, and they're not ready for what's out there," said Nielsen, a former game warden who writes an outdoor column for the Review-Journal.

"These types of interactions between wildlife and humans are just going to increase," he said.

On Oct. 26, Las Vegas police shot and killed a bobcat that ate two parakeets and a cockatoo from a backyard cage in a southwest Las Vegas Valley neighborhood.

So far this fall, animal control officers in Henderson have captured one bobcat that entered a house through the doggy door and another that wandered into a mattress shop and hid under a bed.

Bobcats generally weigh 10 to 15 pounds and are not considered a danger to people.

Even so, such behavior is far from normal for what Nielsen described as a "pretty feisty cat" that normally tries to avoid human contact.

"The situation out in the desert is just so grim right now," Nielsen said.

Weddle said Henderson usually fields one or two bobcat calls a year. In 2007, officers have snared about eight bobcats and chased off another 20 or 30 of them.

Bobcats captured by Henderson animal control are generally released along the Las Vegas Wash, near the city's water reclamation facility.

Bobcats caught by state game wardens are usually killed to prevent them from spreading any diseases that they might have caught in the city back into the wild, Nielsen said.

Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean @reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0350.