A black bear and four cubs that roamed Anchorage's Government Hill neighborhood were moved to an undisclosed remote location Friday morning, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said.
The bears were airlifted to a place where the animals "can turn over a new leaf and live as wild bears," public information officer Ken Marsh said.
The sow, two female yearlings and two male yearlings were in good health after being captured one by one through the week, Marsh said.
The sow and cubs returned to Government Hill for the second year in a row in mid-April. Fish and Game initially planned to kill the bears, but Gov. Bill Walker intervened and asked the department to capture and move the animals instead.
The animals were taken to the Alaska Zoo before being moved.
Fish and Game will track the bears' movements, and Marsh hoped they would not come back to an urban area. Bears have been known to travel as far as 150 miles after being moved, Marsh said, and may travel even farther.
The sow is well known to Fish and Game, as she was one of the bears collared in the department's urban tracking program.
She should be able to adapt to a new life away from the city, Marsh said. "She ate plenty of natural foods," he said, and with spring underway in Alaska, there should be plenty of food for her and the cubs.
Marsh said the relocation was a "short-term solution to really a long-term problem."
Now that the bears have been moved, "another bear will just step in if people don't secure their trash," Marsh said.
"This is a community-wide thing," Marsh said. "Anchorage is in bear country."
Fish and Game will be tracking the bears "intensively" for the next week or so, research biologist Sean Farley said. Collars placed on all the bears emit radio signals pinpointing their locations.
The sow will be tracked for about a year until an electronic release causes her collar to fall off. At that point researchers will retrieve the collar and will be able to retrace her steps, recorded every 30 minutes for the entire year, Farley said.
The cubs were outfitted with collars that will expand as they grow. The collars are designed to degrade in the sunlight over the course of 18 months to 2 years and will then fall off, Farley said.