ANCHORAGE, Alaska—Spring is here and bears are emerging from their dens for the short stroll to Alaska’s largest city. Some residents are putting out the NO VACANCY sign.Anchorage has a reputation for being bear tolerant but after three maulings last summer—including a 15-year-old girl who nearly bled to death when attacked by a grizzly in a city park—a chorus of outrage is building.

Wanda Phillips is among them. She recently moved from Washington state—where she saw no bears—to the Anchorage suburb of Eagle River, where there are lots of bears.

Last summer, Phillips saw at least 10 bears near her home. A grizzly camped out in her back yard defending a moose kill. Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials told her to keep the family inside until the bear was finished with the carcass.

“It (that advice) didn’t seem very helpful to me,” she said. “We have a real safety problem. The fact they are ignoring it is a time bomb.”

Anchorage is unique among mid-sized American cities. The municipality’s 285,000 residents share space with at least 65 brown bears and about 250 black bears. The sprawling municipality is surrounded by wild country. Anchorage is next to Chugach State Park, a half-million acre park that wildlife officials have described as a “bear factory.”

Deaths from bear maulings are uncommon in the municipality. In July 1995, a mother and son were killed by a bear defending a moose carcass along McHugh Creek Trail. However, the mauling of Petra Davis, followed by another attack on the same park trail later last summer and the mauling of a young man in Eagle River, have some residents demanding a crackdown on the bears.