A highway in rural Utah had to be shut down to give a bear a police escort to the other side. The crossing happened at U.S. Route 89 near Ephraim, Utah, which is 115 miles south of Salt Lake City.
According to the Ephraim City Police Facebook page, the bear had been spotted a few days earlier at the pioneer cemetery by a person in the area, who was concerned that the animal may be heading toward the roadway.
The police service was sent out to close the two-lane blacktop to allow the bear to cross over and into safety, and caught the crossing on video.
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The bear starts out by cautiously walking onto the asphalt before crossing the double yellow line and making a sprint for the other side. Incredibly, the bear appears to even look both ways before crossing the road, something that quite a few humans fail to do…
After successfully making it to the other side, the bear jumped over the fence and was then followed by an officer of Utah’s Division of Wildlife Resources to make sure that it reached safety in the nearby mountains.
As one commentator noted, one of the police vehicles made a strategic reversing maneuver in order to shepherd the bear toward the fence, rather than along the roadway.
The party who called in the sighting was concerned that the bear might get hit by a vehicle, which is valid as accidents with cars are the number one cause of bear deaths in the US.
According to a 2018 issue of the scientific journal Behavioral Ecology, American black bears understand the risks of crossing a roadway, and either prefer to do it at nighttime or follow a calmer road during the day.