Dead bear found at WSU

PULLMAN – With school starting next week and students already starting to return to campus, Washington State University officials have been expecting to see a lot of new things on campus. A dead bear wasn’t one of them.

The rotting carcass of a black bear was discovered in a remote part of WSU’s property Wednesday, leaving campus officials bewildered and prompting state wildlife officers to open a criminal poaching investigation.

About midday, in the afternoon heat, a Washington State University Veterinary School facilities manager smelled the bear. Following the stench, he discovered the carcass near an apple tree on undeveloped land off Northeast Terre View Drive in the north part of campus.

University police responded before calling in an agent from the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife. The bear’s gall bladder and paws were missing.

The game agent who investigated believes the animal was poached and harvested for body parts that can be sold on the black market, said Madonna Luers, Eastern Washington spokeswoman for the state agency.

In some cultures, the paws are considered a rare and expensive delicacy and are often served in a soup.

The gall bladders are even more expensive on the black market. In some Asian folk remedies, they are used to treat ailments including ulcers, burns and liver problems. According to the wildlife department, black bear gall bladders can fetch up to $400 in the United States and up to $25,000 in Asia.

Poaching of black bears has been an issue in Eastern Washington in the past, but it hasn’t come up recently, Luers said.

While the game agent believed the animal was poached, he was not able to determine its cause of death. According to university sources, the state officer did not find a bullet, and the body was too decomposed to determine whether there were other injuries.

But it was clear the animal had been killed somewhere else and dropped off on campus, said Charlie Powell, spokesman for the WSU vet school. Powell said he couldn’t imagine why someone would bring the remains to university grounds.

The wildlife agent advised leaving the bear to decay naturally, but the university didn’t want to risk having someone else stumble upon it. “It was so rotten, we just decided to bury it in a field,” Powell said.