Black bear visit surprises residents of Gwinnett County neighborhood

LILBURN, Ga. — A black bear has been spotted in a Gwinnett County neighborhood, to the surprise of state wildlife officials and people in the neighborhood who recorded the bear in a backyard.

Video shows the large black bear rummaging through a Lilburn backyard off Killian Hill Road near the Yellow River.

It appears the bear was looking for food in a bird feeder that was in the backyard.

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“Deer, yeah, they’re pretty common but not a bear,” Dave McKay, who lives nearby, told Channel 2′s Gwinnett County Bureau Chief Matt Johnson.

The bear was spotted in a backyard on Saturday and Sunday.

On Monday morning, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR) received a report of another sighting in the area.

Neighbors are being told to remove food in the backyards that may be tempting to bears and also move their trash to areas where a bear can’t access it.

“That’s what we did, we brought the bird feeders in and just notified a couple of the neighbors,” McKay said.

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It’s unclear how exactly the bear made its way to Lilburn.

“It is absolutely unusual to see a bear in Lilburn,” Kaitlin Goode, Urban Wildlife Program Manager with Georgia DNR said. “The Yellow River is right there and it’s possible that that bear just followed the Yellow River right into town.

Wildlife officials say the bear is just looking for food and should not be considered a threat.

People are urged to scare the bear away from a safe distance so that bears continue to be afraid of humans.

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