A black bear looking for a meal at a Stowe restaurant last week was shot and killed by a police officer after it repeatedly broke into a walk-in cooler. The shooting coincides with an increase in Vermont’s black bear population. On the rise, too, is the number of encounters between humans and the animals, which often find meals at bird feeders and trash bins. The June 3 shooting happened at the Matterhorn, a popular Mountain Road restaurant not far from Stowe Mountain Resort. That morning, town police officer Jamie Bunavicz responded to a call about a black bear outside the restaurant and found one, weighing an estimated 200 to 300 pounds, “laying down near the dumpsters consuming an entire jug of sauce from the walk-in cooler,” according to a police report. Bunavicz left without taking action but was called back to the restaurant later that afternoon and found the bear attempting to break into the walk-in cooler, which has a door on the outside of the building. At that point, he called the state Fish Wildlife Department for assistance, the report says, and game warden Jeremy Schmid advised Bunavicz to shoot the animal “if the bear enters the premises again.” Unaware of what was at stake, the bear returned to the walk-in cooler and started “rummaging through the frozen chicken patties,” the report says. When the bear exited the cooler, Bunavicz opened fire. The wounded bear attempted to flee, then died on the banks of the West Branch of the Little River. Fish Wildlife maintains a “bear response protocol,” according to the department’s wildlife management program manager, David Sausville. The protocol emphasizes early intervention and is meant to help address bear problems before they escalate to the point of lethal intervention, Sausville said. Deterrents such as electric fences and non-lethal responses such as paint guns or banging pots and pans are often deployed first; euthanization is typically used only as a last resort, he said. Once the animal had been seen repeatedly entering the cooler, the bear response protocol dictated that it should be killed, Sausville said. “We’re trying to keep your workers safe,” he said. “Black bears aren’t that aggressive, but they will defend the food source, and if they get cornered, obviously they’re gonna run you over on their way out or defend themselves.” The report does not indicate that the bear killed at the Matterhorn was acting aggressively, but Schmid followed established protocol, according to Sausville. Local police and law enforcement are the only ones legally allowed to kill a bear in this situation, Sausville said, due to their weapons training. But Matterhorn owner Charlie Shaffer said he was “horrified” by the outcome. “If I had been there, I would have put myself between the bear and them,” he said. “It’s ridiculous. I don’t know why they did it.” Stowe police protocol is to defer to Fish Wildlife, according to Chief Brooke O’Steen, who said Bunavicz followed departmental rules in such a situation. She said officers try to avoid drawing their weapons whenever possible but have previously had to euthanize bears after they were hit by vehicles, which occurs fairly regularly in Stowe in the spring and early summer. Shaffer’s owned the Matterhorn for three decades and said he’d never had a bear try to break into the restaurant itself, though bears have attempted to pillage his dumpster. That changed a couple of weeks ago when a bear broke into the cooler, which was typically left unlocked for morning deliveries. Shaffer initially thought a human had broken in. After the second break-in, Shaffer said he ordered a new lock to keep the hungry bear out. Attempts to barricade the door didn’t work, and it became increasingly aggressive, damaging the door and wooden frame around it. Shaffer believes the bear began to time its visits around the food delivery schedule. Still, Shaffer said, the killing of the animal was not the outcome he sought. “Never in a million years would I condone something like that,” he said. “It made me sick. It made me ill. I can’t believe they did that.” News of the bear’s death spread swiftly on social media, and many blamed Shaffer and the Matterhorn for its demise. He said he is being flooded with emails from people pledging to boycott the restaurant, and people driving past the Matterhorn are yelling “bear” from their windows. Brenna Galdenzi, a Stowe resident who runs the animal advocacy group Protect Our Wildlife, said Shaffer has not responded to her calls. “Matterhorn has a long history of attracting bears, and it’s tragic that an innocent bear was killed due to their negligence,” she said. Shaffer defended his deterrence efforts. He doesn’t have bear-proof dumpsters because they are too small for the amount of volume his restaurant handles, he said. Instead, he’s strung an electric wire across his dumpster, though he admitted that negligent employees will occasionally overstuff the dumpster, rendering the wire ineffective. He plans to soon electrify the nearby recycling dumpster, in which people sometimes illicitly place trash. In addition, Shaffer now has his trash and used cooking oil collected more frequently to prevent dumpster overflow and grease build up. “I spent a lifetime trying to make it a great place for everybody, and people act like I’m this negligent guy that doesn’t care about wildlife or have respect for animals,” Shaffer said. “It’s absurd.” Vermont’s black bear population spiked between 2018 and 2024, according to Fish Wildlife, and the department has increasingly used preventative public education campaigns to try and reduce conflicts with humans. Stowe, with its many short-term rentals and restaurants nestled within a wide swath of state-conserved land in the Green Mountains, has had to grapple with an increasingly brazen bear population. In 2024, a man had to fire a warning shot to scare away a bear that had broken into his home. Last year, a bear charged a Stowe Reporter journalist over a slice of pizza. Last fall, in response to growing concerns about the town’s aggressive bears, the Stowe Selectboard amended its health and sanitation ordinance to allow the town’s health officer and police officers to issue civil tickets for “improperly contained garbage and littering including attracting wildlife.” It’s unclear how many tickets have been issued. The post Stowe Police Officer Shoots Bear After Restaurant Cooler Break-In appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less