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Defenders Magazine
On the Ground: Helping Californians Embrace Black Bears
One person’s trash often becomes a black bear’s treasure, especially in the Lake Tahoe area. But work by Defenders, and its partners on the Tahoe Council for Wild Bears, is closing the lid on trash bins in that region in an effort to protect both bears and people.
There are approximately 36,000 black bears in California, and the growing urbanization in that state, coupled with vacation home development in the woods and wilderness, is leading to increased conflicts between humans and bears. One of the largest problems results when bears begin eating food they find in trash bins.
The problem is particularly acute in the area around Lake Tahoe. Since 2000, at least 30 bears have been killed there because of garbage-related incidents. Many more bears have been chased away from populated areas with pepper spray, bear dogs and rubber bullets.
Even when it doesn’t lead to fatal encounters with humans, dumpster-diving is harming bears’ health in California and elsewhere. Like their increasingly obese human counterparts, garbage-eating bears weigh as much as 30 percent more, and are a third less active, than their wild relatives, according to research done by the Wildlife Conservation Society and published recently in the Journal of Zoology. The dumpster-fed bears are also changing their natural behaviors—becoming more nocturnal and spending much less time denning in winter, say the authors of the study. In an effort to free the bears from their unhealthy dumpster addictions, last year Defenders (with funds from the Wendy P. McCaw Foundation) and its partners installed 126 bear-proof dumpsters along the northwestern shore of Lake Tahoe. The groups also started a campaign to educate people about protecting garbage and pet food from marauding bears, and other steps to living in harmony with their wild neighbors. In partnership with local supermarkets, the groups distributed millions of grocery bags printed with tips about living in bear country.
The effort has been a resounding success, according to Cynthia Wilkerson of Defenders’ California office. The numbers of calls to report bear problems at the dumpsters went from as many as 50 in 2002 to zero in 2003, and the number of bears that had to be killed after becoming habituated to human trash went from three in 2002 to zero in 2003. In addition, the number of bears that were hit and killed on area roads after accessing the dumpsters went from an average of six a year in 2001 and 2002, to zero in 2003.
“The bear is an animal that has always captured the human imagination and is as important to us culturally as it is biologically,” says Wilkerson. “Our efforts to keep bears alive and wild in the Tahoe Basin are paying off, and as surrounding communities adopt ‘bear-aware practices,’ we can really make a difference for this charismatic species.”
