The Lake Tahoe basin is home to roughly 300 bears and it's becoming a problem. As humans and black bear environments collide, the way of life for a black bear is changing. Instead of feasting on their natural cuisine, these cunning black bears are becoming the ultimate dumpster divers. Opting for nutrient dense trash, bears and humans, especially in South Lake Tahoe, are on a crash course.
Trash that is left outside of residential and commercial building now fills the bellies of these hungry bears.
Thankfully, action is taking place and filmmaker Riley McClaughry is using his skill behind the camera to bring awareness to the topic and create change. You can watch his film, The Backyard Bears, on youtube and read his take on the topic in the Q&A below.
Q&A with filmmaker Riley McClaughry
Q: What is the issue with bears in Lake Tahoe?
A: So the problem that we are running into here in Tahoe is ongoing human wildlife conflicts with black bears. Bears need to eat a lot, especially come fall when they enter what’s called hyperphagia, it’s basically a feeding frenzy where bears are putting on as much weight as possible before winter. This means foraging through the forest all day long.
Black bears are very opportunistic, and will gladly take an easy calorie dense meal if we allow them. Bears getting into trash that’s left unlocked and unattended by residents or local businesses, people directly feeding bears or leaving campsites messy and allowing bears to get an easy food source, residents having bird feeders or fruiting plants and trees, these are all things that “food condition” bears to human food.
In other words it leads to bears associating people with food, and this leads to conflicts which can include home break ins, car break ins, bears approaching people looking for food etc. These are all conflicts that we are seeing here in Tahoe.
Q: Is this happening in all of Lake Tahoe, or just South Lake?
A: This does happen all around the basin, I think Incline village, Tahoe city and the northern regions of the basin are a few steps ahead of south lake though. In North Lake you see a lot more residents with bear proof trash containers, electrified homes and crawl spaces etc. which leads to much less conflict.
Q: Is this happening outside of Lake Tahoe?
A: These conflicts are something that we do see all over the country, and working towards coexistence with bears and not conflict is what we’re striving for. The wildlife is what makes living in a place like Lake Tahoe special, they belong here, and it’s our responsibility to respect that and live alongside them.
It’s cool to see what other communities around the country are doing to better coexist with wildlife as we are encroaching on their habitat. 100% coexistence is such a complicated and hard end goal to wrap your head around, but it’s worth fighting for to keep our wildlife and ourselves happy and safe.
Q: What can we do to correct this behavior? Or, how can we create change?
A: It’s an educational thing for both species. On our end as humans we need to do a better job of locking up attractants and not allowing the bears to get easy rewards for this kind of behavior.
We need to not allow the bears to feel comfortable in our neighborhoods and around people, so hazing bears when we see them in town, and giving them negative reinforcement is important to teaching them that humans aren’t something they want to hang out with.
A one solution answer is hard, and I don’t know if anyone knows what the one solution is, but if we all take steps and do our part in making Tahoe a bear safe community, it will work itself out and the solution will become more clear as that happens.
