Bear Naked Truth

A female black bear takes in her surroundings from the safety of a pine tree after being trapped, tagged and hazed by state parks and wildlife staff last fall. CDFW photo by Travis VanZant.

As the Lake Tahoe Basin’s black bears emerge from their winter slow-down and slumber, campground managers, biologists, park rangers and wildlife officers hope to have a new tool at their disposal to help manage the human-bear conflicts certain to arise this spring and summer: a growing catalogue of Tahoe’s bear population.

Since the fall of 2019, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and California State Parks have teamed up to trap, tag and haze as many Tahoe bears as possible to identify individual bears, build a genetic database of the population, study its overall health, and whether related bears are passing down problem behaviors from one generation to the next. Eighteen bears have been trapped to date – four of those being recaptures. Genetic material is collected and each bear is outfitted with an identifying ear tag before release.

This May, CDFW will broaden the effort and team up with the U.S. Forest Service to trap, tag and haze additional bears within the Tahoe National Forest. The trapping takes place in short windows during the early spring and late fall off-seasons at Tahoe-area campgrounds. The bears are hazed – but not harmed – upon release to provide a negative human interaction and to see whether the experience will keep them away from campgrounds and people in the future.

In the following video, Shelly Blair, CDFW’s wildlife biologist for El Dorado and Alpine counties, and Sarinah Simons, California State Parks Sierra District human-bear management specialist, explain the innovative collaboration and scientific work during trapping efforts last fall.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) recently ended a multi-trap effort to remove a public safety bear from Lake Tahoe’s North Shore after the trapping effort proved unsuccessful and there were no more signs of the offending bear in the community.

The trapping effort was initiated last month by CDFW law enforcement following a bear attack of a victim inside his North Shore home. On August 27, a bear entered an occupied residence and severely bit a male victim, who was trying to encourage the bear to leave the house. It was an unprovoked attack. The bear had an exit, began to move toward the exit, and then turned back away from the exit into the house to bite the victim.

Between September 5 and 13, forensic evidence (DNA matches from samples collected at the house) proved the attack was caused by the same bear responsible for four other break-ins into occupied homes – and into one house twice the same night.

As with all public safety incidents, the decision to trap and remove the bear was made by CDFW law enforcement. CDFW law enforcement is required to investigate and make a decision regarding trapping a public safety animal based on interviews, physical evidence and the totality of the circumstances surrounding an incident. Public safety is among CDFW’s chief responsibilities with regard to black bears in Lake Tahoe. This was not a depredation event.

CDFW obtained approval from all property owners where bear traps were set. Property owners were fully supportive and cooperative with the trapping effort. Two bears that entered the traps during the effort were tagged and safely released after DNA analysis proved they were not the offending, public safety bear.

The trapping effort was active for two weeks. After CDFW determined that acquiring the target bear was unlikely, the traps were removed. CDFW communicated this to interested Tahoe residents on September 23. CDFW continues to monitor the North Shore community for bear activity and is poised to collect and analyze any forensic evidence from any further break-ins. CDFW will reinstall traps if necessary to protect the safety of the Lake Tahoe community.