“We find the deaths of these bears very suspicious,” said Mark Rutkowski, the Game Commission Northeast Region Law Enforcement Supervisor. “Toxicological tests will be done to find the cause of death.”
The Pennsylvania Game Commission announced on Facebook that the likely cause of the bears’ death was poisoning.
The four bears were found dead in or near the same tree, with no signs of struggle or stumbling in the area, suggesting they died suddenly.
The mother bear and a cub were examined after death and underwent toxicological testing at the Penn State Animal Diagnostic Laboratory in State College.