BARNHART, Mo. — The bear from St. Louis County is still on the move.
5 On Your Side has received a video of a black bear moving through Barnhart, Missouri, in Jefferson County on Wednesday.
The footage shows the bear walking tirelessly through a wooded area and cutting through a neighborhood where he enters a backyard.
Earlier this week there was a bear spotted in Ballwin that resembles the same bear spotted in Barnhart.
There was also a bear sighting reported by Arnold Police Department in Arnold, Missouri.
Jefferson County Sheriff's Office said they try to discourage the bears from staying in urban and suburban areas. They want to make sure the wildlife goes back to the wooded areas.
Google Maps shows it would take a person over nine hours to walk from Ballwin to Barnhart. If this is the same bear, the bear has traveled roughly 25 miles.
Dan Zarlenga with the Missouri Department of Conservation told 5 On Your Side that this bear is travelling southward.
"We see this as a good trend," Zarlenga said. "Our hope is it will continue on in that direction and out of the metro area. The best course of action is to let the bear find its own way as that is the least stressful scenario for it. We would only attempt to intervene (tranquilize and relocate) as a last resort if there were an immediate life-threatening situation to the bear or people."
Although witnesses may want to help the bear the MDC has continued to take the stance that there is no need to intervene.
"Bears can instinctually find those things on their own, and offering any human-sourced food and water would only discourage it from moving on," Zarlenga said. "It also runs the risk the bear might become dependent on human handouts, lose its caution around humans, and even become a nuisance if it begins to associate people with food. It’s always best to leave wildlife wild. Bears have been successfully living in nature . . . heat, cold, and all . . . long before humans came along."
According to Zarlenga, this bear is not a cub. The bear is most likely a teen or young adult trying to find his way after his mother kicked him out of the den, which is a normal part of a bear's life cycle.