“Blondie” the mama bear was a large and furry fixture in Monrovia known for her love of cooling off with a backyard-pool dip on a toasty day. But earlier this month, the local celebrity was euthanized by the state, over the objections of local elected leaders, following two incidents where she swiped at residents.
Now her two cubs, believed to be 2 to 3 months old, will spend the rest of their childhood in captivity in the hopes that they can one day be released back into the wild.
Thousands of community members signed a petition to try to prevent her euthanasia, and over the weekend, more than 100 residents gathered for a memorial walk through Monrovia. They traveled two miles — one for each of her orphaned cubs — in the shape of a B for Blondie.
They carried photos of Blondie’s face and signs with messages such as “Blondie didn’t deserve to die!” “Love your neighbear” and “Cubs spend their first year playing, exploring, nursing, napping and learning from mama bear. Now what?”
The backlash over the killing has roiled Monrovia and other foothill communities in the Angeles National Forest, where bear sightings are a part of life and even seen by some as one of the perks of living on the wildlife interface. Videos regularly go viral of bears swimming in pools, building meals from trash-can contents and occasionally getting into it with dogs. Although there is acknowledgment of the potential danger of bears, the hillside cul-de-sac culture is largely one of cordial coexistence.
But the recent death of Blondie has exposed how fragile this peace can be.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife captured Blondie on March 15 after DNA testing linked the bear to two incidents where Monrovia residents were swiped at and sustained minor injuries, according to Monrovia City Manager Dylan Feik. The first incident took place in June 2025 when Blondie approached an elderly man sitting on his porch, and the second occurred on March 14 while a woman was walking her dog.
Monrovia leaders advocated for relocating Blondie and her cubs to the Angeles National Forest following the latest incident, but by the time they got a response from Fish and Wildlife, the decision to euthanize was already made, according to Feik.
“The city was not a part of that conversation or decision,” said Monrovia Mayor Becky Shevlin. “We were absolutely devastated, especially when you think about her having the two little cubs.”
Blondie’s two male cubs are now living at San Diego Humane Society’s Ramona Wildlife Center, where they will be raised with the goal of “giving them the best possible chance to return to the wild,” according to the center.
Assemblymember John Harabedian (D-Pasadena) described Blondie’s death as a “heartbreaking and frustrating outcome.”
“There was no communication with state or local leaders, including me, about why this occurred, was this necessary and were there other ways that we could have approached it,” he said.
The euthanasia decision highlights a growing tension as suburban sprawl in foothill areas and environmental threats such as climate change and wildfires push bruin and human into greater contact. There was a noticeable uptick in human-bear conflict in 2022 when a severe statewide drought likely pushed black bears toward human food sources and another increase in Southern California last year probably due to habitat disruption from the Eaton fire, a Fish and Wildlife spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday.
State wildlife officials said in a statement last week that the decision to euthanize is a last resort, but noted that anytime there is human-wildlife conflict the department’s priority is protecting human life. Based on the department’s black bear policy, Blondie was designated a “Public Safety Bear,” meaning she posed a threat to public safety and could not be safely returned to the wild.
She is the first California black bear to be euthanized in 2026. There were two bears euthanized in 2025, three bears in 2024 and five bears in 2023, according to Fish and Wildlife. One of the bears euthanized last year was a sow in Sierra Madre who had been linked to multiple home break-ins in the months following the Eaton fire.
When it came to Blondie, officials said they conducted a “thorough assessment of the bear’s behavior and circumstances surrounding the incident.” City leaders said the decision felt rushed and that the local community deserved to have a seat at the table.
“We definitely care about humanity and care about the woman who might have been hurt or harmed as a result,” said Monrovia City Councilmember Tamala Kelly. “We just don’t know exactly what happened, and we wanted to be a part of the [decision-making] process.”
The Fish and Wildlife Department said that relocation was not a feasible option for Blondie.
“Bears have strong spatial memory and often return to familiar areas,” the department said in a statement. “When translocated long distances, they recreate the same conflict behavior or struggle to survive in unfamiliar habitat.”
The department also defended the decision to separate the cubs from the mother, noting that the level of comfort the mother bear had attained in human territory was a bad example for her offspring.
“Mother bears teach their cubs how to survive by modeling behavior,” the department stated. “When that behavior includes accessing human food sources or shelter, cubs can learn to associate people and homes with resources.”
The department emphasized the important role humans have to play in keeping bears wild by taking steps such as securing crawl spaces to ensure the animals don’t shelter under their homes and removing removing food attractants such as unsecured trash or pet food.
Community advocates concur that better bear education is essential.
Local resident Brian Gordon, who started the petition to save Blondie, is frequently preaching principles of “co-thriving” and reminding locals and visitors alike to remove all outdoor food sources and give bears as wide a berth as possible.
Gordon and his partner, Rick Martinez, run the Poolbearlife Instagram account dedicated to documenting the antics of local Monrovia bears like Blondie. But, in addition to boosting education efforts for those living near bears, Gordon believes there is room for Fish and Wildlife to improve its own policies.
Following Blondie’s death, he changed the petition into a call to honor the mama bear with meaningful reform.
The petition is now asking state officials for a full investigation to be carried out prior to a euthanasia decision, including witness statements and complete incident context such as whether the bear’s actions were defensive rather than aggressive.
The details surrounding the two incidents in which Blondie hurt local residents remain murky, Gordon said, and he is eager to learn more about what factors led to the behavior.
In a statement to The Times, a Fish and Wildlife spokesperson said that the attacks were not related to Blondie defending her cubs, as she did not have cubs at the time of the June 2025 incident and her cubs were not with her during the latest incident.
“Based on observed behavior, the bear was likely food-conditioned and habituated to living near humans over time,” the spokesperson said Tuesday.
The updated petition also calls for increased transparency in how euthanasia decisions are made and communicated as well as earlier intervention following initial incidents.
Assemblymember Harabedian agrees that more preventive action is a big piece of the puzzle. In the last legislative cycle, he introduced Assembly Bill 1024, which called for managing potentially troublesome bears in the San Gabriel Valley through expanded GPS tracking, inspired by the state’s successful Tahoe Basin model of bear management.
The bill, which came with an estimated price tag of $3.7 million its first year and $2.9 million a year after that, failed to pass the Assembly Appropriations Committee. In addition to GPS monitoring of local bears, the bill would have increased funding to educate the public on how to be better bear neighbors.
“Frankly, it’s really frustrating that the bill didn’t make it,” said Harabedian, “because I think it could have helped prevent outcomes like this.”
Both Harabedian and Gordon expressed concern over how the initial Blondie swiping incident was handled in June, which — unlike the March 14 incident — was not publicized.
“Should we the public have received that information [about the initial attack]?” Gordon pondered. “Could that have helped capture her at that time? Could we have done stuff differently that would have been proactive rather than reactive?”
“I think good government should always be proactive, forward-looking and thoughtful, and what we saw with Blondie was the exact opposite,” said Harabedian. “It’s frustrating because it was preventable.”
The post Angry backlash after beloved mama bear is killed: ‘Blondie didn’t deserve to die!’ appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
