W.Va. bear tracked 29 years likely died

Associated Press

CHARLESTON, W.Va.

For the first time in three decades, a black bear known as Quagmire will not roam West Virginia’s woods.

Division of Natural Resources officials suspect the bear — the longest-lived bruin ever tracked by the agency — perished last winter.

Quagmire got her unusual name when she was a young bear in the early 1980s. DNR biologists trapped her, tranquilized her and put a radio collar on her. To differentiate between her and dozens of other radio- collared bears, they gave her a name. The naming system in place at the time called for a moniker that started with “Q.” They settled on “Quagmire.”

Quagmire lived a typical black-bear life. She got pregnant and bore litters of cubs. Year after year after year, biologists tracked her comings and goings by following the steady beep-beep of her collar’s radio signal.

After a decade or so, her followers began to notice that she had lived far longer than the average bear. They celebrated her 20th year and then her 25th.

“She bore her last litter of cubs at age 25,” said Chris Ryan, the DNR’s former black-bear project leader. “Over her lifetime, we estimate she contributed about 20 cubs to the state’s bear population.”

Quagmire dropped off the DNR’s map last fall. Ryan said her collar showed that she was alive just before the deer-firearm season, but she slipped the collar not long after.

“One of our biologists, Steve Wilson, went out to investigate,” Ryan said. “Steve talked with some guys who had gotten trail-camera pictures of her. They said she had lost a lot of weight and that her collar was just flapping around loose on her.”

Ryan doesn’t know for sure, but he suspects Quagmire went into hibernation and never woke up.