A young black bear that was repeatedly sighted in the Baltimore area before being sedated in Prince George’s County and relocated turned up this week in suburban Northern Virginia.

Police said the bear was seen wandering around the town of Herndon, Virginia on Monday morning, prompting officials to monitor him throughout the day. He later made his way up a tree, where he stayed for four hours, and ultimately was tranquilized and moved again.

Herndon is located about 25 miles west of the nation’s capital.

“It was really cool because you don’t see that here in Northern Virginia in this area,” Lisa Herndon, public information officer for the Herndon Police Department, said Wednesday. “Everyone in town took such an interest in him.”

The black bear began turning heads in Maryland in mid-May, when he was first spotted in the Randallstown and Pikesville areas of Baltimore County. He later passed through Howard County, where he was captured on camera in Ellicott City and at the Columbia Crossing shopping center.

After he was then seen climbing trees in Prince George’s County, natural resources officials sedated the bear on May 26 and moved him to what they said was a more suitable area, west of Silver Spring.

The DNR also put a collared tracker on the bear as part of a University of Maryland research study assessing how the animals move across the state.

Afterward, the bear followed highways south into Virginia, said Jonathan Trudeau, a game mammal section leader with the DNR.

In Herndon, the first calls about a wandering bear rolled in at around 8 a.m. Monday. The bear, which DNR previously said was about 18 months old, proceeded to climb up a tree on Elden Street. According to Herndon, the police spokeswoman, a crowd of people gathered to watch the bear nap.

The bear, who officials nicknamed “Elden,” eventually climbed back down before immediately scampering up another tree.

After assessing the situation, Virginia Conservation Police and biologists tranquilized the bear and carried him back down on the fire department’s catch tarp. The bear was then relocated to the Shenandoah Valley region in southern Virginia, according to Herndon.

According to Trudeau, there have been an increasing number of bear sightings outside of where they typically can be found in Western Maryland. Since 2022, the DNR has tracked one bear every year that has roamed developed areas in the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia region.

Trudeau attributed the trend to an increasing bear population. In Pennsylvania and West Virginia, bears have also been spotted farther east than usual.

He said the age of around 1 1/2 is when bears “disperse,” or leave their natal home range to find another place to live out their years. Typically, male bears tend to travel longer distances.

“Bears did occupy the entirety of the state at one point in time,” Trudeau said of Maryland. “It’s just now that bears are recolonizing areas that they once occupied. That landscape has just changed dramatically, so the conditions are not as ideal as they were before human development occurred.”

There are around 2,000 bears in Maryland, according to DNR.

Most black bears are afraid of people and will likely leave if they spot a human. Still, DNR recommends keeping a safe distance from bears.

In Herndon, folks were still buzzing about the bear, now a Virginia resident.

“We get a lot of deer and foxes in suburban areas in Northern Virginia, but for a bear to be hanging out that long here in town was quite a spectacle,” Herndon said.