POCATELLO — There’s a new female grizzly bear in town, and she’s as lucky as the community, according to Pocatello Zoo Superintendent Peter Pruett.

    “When bears get habituated to humans, it creates a dangerous situation, and bears always get the short end of the stick,” Pruett said.

       A 2-year-old female grizzly was trapped on the Shoshone National Forest near the Pahaska Tepee Resort outside of Cody, Wyo., this week. The sub-adult bear had been mooching snacks off tourists and raiding camping areas. The bear found itself inside a barrel trap on Tuesday, and two days later it was in quarantine at the Pocatello Zoo’s Sara W. Ifft Grizzly Bear Exhibit at Upper Ross Park.

    “After a quarantine period of 30 days, we will start to introduce the new bear to Stripes, our 29-year-old grizzly who has been at the zoo for decades,” Pruett said.

    Stripes has been the lone grizzly at the zoo since Charlie died three years ago before the new grizzly exhibit was completed. Because Stripes had spent many years in close quarters with the large male, Pruett is confident she will be able to socialize with the new younger female bear.

    “We want to slowly introduce them to each other,” Pruett said.

    This process will take up to six weeks, but Pruett said he’s optimistic the new bear will find a home in Pocatello.

    “Now we have a young bear to celebrate, and hopefully people can name it,” Pruett said.

    The Idaho Department of Fish & Game had worked with the Pocatello Zoo to obtain certification from the United States Fish & Wildlife Service as a facility certified to receive a grizzly bear. Christopher Servheen, Grizzly Bear Recovery Coordinator for the Wildlife Service, then worked with all the agencies involved in grizzly recovery and management to keep an eye out for a bear involved in human-related conflicts that might be a candidate for the Pocatello Zoo.

    Pruett said he wasn’t expecting to receive another grizzly so soon, but he’s delighted.

    “You never know when one will become available,” Pruett said.

    The zoo superintendent said he’s also happy it’s a younger female instead of a male because he thinks that will make the socialization of the two bears much easier.

    Once the bears have established a working relationship, Pruett said the zoo’s bear handler, Jim Bienemann, will begin working on operant conditioning with both bears. Zoos in other parts of the country have trained grizzlies to lean against thick chain link enclosures so they can get shots or to stand on a scale so they can be weighed without having to dart the bears.

    “It’s much easier on the animals,” Pruett said.

    And because the new bear is so young, Pruett said it will give Bienemann a chance to teach it good habits.

    So far, Stripes knows there is a new bear at the exhibit in Pocatello because of her keen sense of smell, but she has not had any visual or physical contact with the newcomer.

    Pruett said the new bear is a beautiful specimen.

    “She’s got that classic grizzled look,” he said.

    Plans are in the works this winter to install a web cam at the grizzly exhibit so people can spy on the pair of grizzlies by going to the zoo’s website, zoo.pocatello.us.

    The Pocatello Zoo is dedicated to creating exhibits with animals that are native to Idaho’s ecosystem.