A Louisiana black bear was killed Sunday on U.S. 90 near New Iberia Sunday night, according to the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office.

The bear, a female weighing somewhere between 200 and 300 pounds, was struck at 8:19 p.m. by a 2002 GMC pickup truck driven by Dick Romero of New Iberia as he was on the east-bound on ramp from Louisiana 83 or Weeks Island Road.

“The bear just ran out in front of him,” said Capt. Wendell Raborn, a Sheriff’s Office spokesman.

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Romero described the experience as “pretty scary.”

“I didn’t know what it was,” Romero said. “I hit my brakes but it was too late. ... When I looked in my rear view mirror at first it looked like a human.”

Romero was not injured in the crash but his truck was badly damaged. Romero estimates he hit the bear at about 40 to 45 mph.

Raborn said the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries was called out to retrieve the bear’s carcass.

The black bear is listed as an endangered and threatened species under federal law, said Maria Davidson, large carnivore program manager for the DW&F. She said the bears have been bothersome to property and homeowners in the Lydia area not far from where the female bear was killed.

Davidson said the bear spends most of the year in wooded areas along the coast, but fruits from most berry-bearing plants are finished and bears’ diets move to pecans, hickory nuts and acorns. However, bears also have a taste for garbage.

“Bears come up in that area because the sugar cane is still high,” Davidson said. “Sugar cane provides cover for the bears” to get access to garbage that humans keep near their homes.

In nearby Lydia, state biologists already have caught one nuisance black bear several weeks ago and relocated it, but Davidson believes that there are several others that look to garbage as an easy meal. She said she believes the bear killed Sunday was probably one of the bears that tormented property owners in Lydia.

“We still have two traps set around Lydia,” she said.

Davidson said bear contact with humans happens every year and with more frequency as the mammals seek food sources this time of year. She suggests that homeowners can do a few things to lessen the chance of a bear seeking food from their property.

• Secure the garbage in a shed or garage where a bear might not have easy access and wait until the morning of the garbage pickup to put it to the road.

• If you have pecan or other nut-bearing trees, try to keep the area around it cleaned up. With fewer pecans on the ground, the less opportunity there is for the bears.

• Don’t leave pet food out overnight. Bears will be enticed by the smell and expect an easy meal.

Because it is illegal to possess any part of an endangered animal, DW&F will bury or incinerate the bear’s carcass, Davidson said; however, it will have the skull cleaned and used for the department’s educational programs, if it is not damaged.

She said she did not know the extent of the damage to the bear that was killed Sunday.

Davidson said the traps in the Lydia area will remain until the bears stop being a nuisance, but even bears that are relocated have a way of finding their way back to their territory and often eventually return.