A mother black bear and her cub are causing quite the stir in South Lake Tahoe, as some neighbors are now rallying community support for the duo.
It comes as the California Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed to CBS Sacramento on Wednesday that they are monitoring the bears and plan to euthanize the mother, which is identified by its tag number as bear number 753.
“CDFW had determined that the bear is ‘habituated’ – meaning it has learned to associate people, homes and neighborhoods as sources of food and has become completely reliant and dependent on those human food sources. Consequently, CDFW has determined that management action is required, and bear 753 has been approved for lethal removal,” a spokesperson for the agency told CBS Sacramento in a statement.
On both Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, Tahoe’s nonprofit BEAR League and south shore neighbors teamed up to call attention to the plans and send a message that bears should not be killed. They hosted a roadside protest near the Tahoe Keys Marina.
The Tahoe community has lovingly named the mother, Hope, and her playful cub, Bounce.
“We want to evolve. We want to coexist,” said Staci Baker at the roadside rally Wednesday night.
Baker is a veterinarian of 30 years in the greater Tahoe region.
“We can be kinder and smarter. We can do this as a community. We don’t want CDFW trapping and slaughtering anymore,” Baker said.
The CDFW said the approved “lethal removal” follows a series of more than a dozen home break-ins by the bears this summer.
“This sow and now its dependent cub have repeatedly broken into homes, including occupied homes and including situations that were no fault of the property owners. Obviously, this creates an unsafe situation when an adult bear is actively looking to break into homes and other buildings. From our long experience in the Tahoe Basin and other parts of the state, this conflict behavior is likely to continue and escalate over time as the bears persist in seeking out human food sources. While this bear has not shown aggressive behavior toward people, that is too often the outcome in situations such as this, once a bear has lost its natural fear of people,” a spokesperson for the agency told CBS Sacramento.
Kathi Zollinger, a volunteer team leader for the BEAR League, says she has been working round-the-clock daily to humanely ‘haze’ the bears with paintball guns, vehicles and other non-lethal options to help push the bears back to the wild where they belong.
“People call and we will go haze her out of mainly the keys, sometimes up to 9 hours a day,” said Zollinger, describing the work as a full-time job.
She says now it feels like time is running out since CDFW confirmed its plans to euthanize the mother.
“I cry regularly about it. It’s awful they think the only thing they can do is kill the bear,” Zollinger said. “She’s not the only one doing this. There are six moms in the area we are aware of. What are they going to do? Kill them all? That is ridiculous.”
Zollinger says the BEAR League would rather see the animals relocated and even offered to pay for it.
“It’s not the perfect answer but it’s better than her being dead,” Zollinger said. “You can’t kill your way out of this. That doesn’t solve the problem.”
CBS Sacramento asked CDFW what will happen to ‘Bounce’ the cub if its mother is euthanized.
“The cub will be evaluated if and when we are able to catch it. Our goal was to get the cub into a permitted wildlife rehabilitation facility – to break this generational pattern of human conflict and home invasions – and return it to the wild in the spring when it is big enough and old enough to care for itself and when there are a lot of natural resources on the landscape to support its transition to being a wild bear,” a spokesperson for CDFW responded.
The agency clarified it is not actively setting traps for any bears in this area at this time.
BEAR League advocates disagree with CDFW’s approach and say human error can be at least partly to blame for the “break-ins.”
Zollinger says in several cases their group believes home doors were left unlocked or windows were left open, which allowed the bears easy entry and says they cannot be blamed for searching for food to survive in bear country, where the loss of habitat is threatening their kind.
“We do want people to learn how to coexist with the bears. We do that through education. We want people to wire their homes now,” Zollinger said.
She says electric wiring homes in the Tahoe region, which will administer a non-lethal shock when the bears get too close, is the best way to save the animals and protect property.
They also advocate that Tahoe neighbors keep their doors and windows shut and locked, properly secure and dispose of garbage, clean up fallen fruit from trees in their yards and actively work to scare away any bears near a home so they do not get too comfortable.