7-Eleven Employee
Oh my goodness. He knows how to open... Hey, stop! Hey! Hey!!! Get out, get out!
Shelby Herbert
You just heard part of a video of an adult black bear breaking into a Tahoe area Seven 11, which went viral in 2021.
7-Eleven Employee
Get out. Hey!
Shelby Herbert
In it, the poor videographer is hiding behind a counter, begging the bear to leave as it appears to sniff around a hand sanitizer dispenser. The video itself is pretty hilarious, but this interaction represents an unsettling reality for under-prepared visitors to Lake Tahoe. The Nevada Department of Wildlife says that Tahoe bear populations are not only rebounding, but actually returning to their historical habitat – even if that means your Airbnb is in the way. Their return comes with increased opportunities for wildlife-human conflicts.
I’m Shelby Herbert, and I’d like to welcome you to Biotalks. I’m an environmental reporter and an audio storyteller. I got my start in public radio, and you can hear my work on NPR affiliate station KUNR and the Mountain West News Bureau. This episode is part of an ongoing series about connecting to the biodiversity in our own backyards.
A California-based rescue service called Bear League is often the first line of defense for Tahoe visitors and locals when it comes to bear break-ins. They try to reduce the number of bears killed in what follows negative encounters with humans. Wildlife specialist Ann Bryant directs the organization and has 30 years of experience in the bear biz. She's here to bear all on this stigmatized species, as well as how bears are adapting to human encroachment and how we can coexist with them. Thanks for joining me!
Shelby Herbert
Hi, Ann. Thanks so much for coming on today. Welcome to the podcast.
Ann Bryant
Hi Shelby, it's great to be here with you. I'm really looking forward to having a chat about bears!
Shelby Herbert
Awesome. Thanks so much. So how are you guys doing this morning? I heard you just got off the phones — I mean, people are encountering bears out there.
Ann Bryant
Oh, I'll tell you what, it's been a typical fall morning. A lot of activity, a lot of phone calls all night long. Early this morning we had a mom and two cubs in somebody's house. We had another bear under somebody's house trying to hibernate. We've had bears getting into bird feeders, bears getting into people's cars because they forgot to lock the door. It's been insane already and it's just mid-morning, so it's gonna be a wild few weeks until the bears kind of start to hibernate. So we're ready for it.
Shelby Herbert
That is wild. Tell me about where we are in this season. I mean, is this a time where you expect them to be starting their torpor or hibernation or…
Ann Bryant
What this is called right now is their season for Hyperphasia, which that's when the bears realize there's a serious change in seasons. Their biology is telling them: we gotta get ready to go into the den so we gotta smash in as many calories as we possibly can in as short a time. Normally, they're foraging maybe four hours a day. So they take a lot of naps. But now they're actually out foraging and looking for food 20 hours a day, depending on the size of the bear. Between 25 and 35 to even 40,000 calories every day. They have to stack on as many as they can so that when they go into the den they can just sleep away the rest of the winter. That's why it's so busy and we're getting so many calls because the bears are out. People are seeing them and they're butting heads
Shelby Herbert
Well I can definitely relate to that. I mean, it's getting colder and we're approaching the holidays and I'm definitely packing as many calories as I can! So, just from your recollection, where are you guys getting the most calls? Do you keep track of that?
Ann Bryant
Yes, we do. We keep track of all calls that come in and it's pretty varied. We have a lot of calls coming from the South Lake Tahoe area, state line area in Nevada, North Shore, Tahoe City on over into Incline and up to Truckee. I mean, it's just everywhere. All the bears are in that mode now where they're just hail bent on eating and a lot of them are starting to find their dens. The ones we know about are under houses, unfortunately. They will find a trap door that's not secured and they'll open it and then they go and they rearrange things unfortunately, and sometimes bash into the heat duct or the gas line. It can get bad. We got a great big bear out from under a house yesterday in South Lake Tahoe. We got him out and felt guilty because he was already all snuggled in, and we had the snow.
He is out in the cold, but he'll find another place. He'll probably just find another place under someone else's house. But that's kind of what's going on in there. They're going into homes where the doors don't securely lock really well. They have learned how to go around and check for windows and doors that don't have good locks and they know how to just open them — just like a human. The only thing is that they're going in to raid the refrigerator, not steal the jewelry. And then they make a mess. So these are the kinds of calls we're getting right now.
Shelby Herbert
Wow. How big was this guy you found under the house?
Ann Bryant
He was a big one. We estimated he was easily about 850 pounds.
Shelby Herbert
What do you do when you get a call like that?
Ann Bryant
Well, we get a call usually from the homeowner who is hearing noises, bangs and clangs and they realize there's something under the house and it's not just a little squirrel. So we know what it's gonna be and we go over, we send our team, check it out, find the bear, and if it's not a mama that has just given birth or just about to give birth, then we will scare him out.
Shelby Herbert
How does that happen? Oh my gosh.
Ann Bryant
They don't sleep into a deep state of torpor. They're really easy to wake up and so we just crawl in there and shine our light fine. Where he is at, he's usually back in a corner and then we make noise, try and get behind him or at least out of his way so we don't get trampled while he is trying to get out, he's gonna be wanting out, we've invaded his den and he's not feeling safe. So he'll come out and then we chase him away and then we have to secure the opening. Otherwise he just goes down the street, sits and waits till we drive away and then he goes right back. So we're onto him now. Try to be as smart as the bears are. It's not easy, but yeah, each case is different. It depends on the layout of the house. If it's right on a busy highway, we don't want to scare him and send him running. You have to consider the circumstances of each event and then make a plan. Some days we do several in one day.
Shelby Herbert
Have you ever had any close calls? I mean, do they ever come up from their sleep and they're like, “Who the hell are these guys?”
Ann Bryant
They are surprised, but like I said, they wake up pretty quickly and they don't wake up mad. They wake up scared, but we have had 'em where they've come right up — or one will come around a corner that you didn't even think about and all of a sudden there's a big bear right in your face and you're on your stomach because these are crawlspaces. They're not basements, you can't stand up. But they've never hurt us. I mean they could — they're big and they've got teeth and claws. And people think, oh my gosh! But they are more afraid of us — believe it or not — than we are of them. You get used to it. You have to read their faces and you can tell by how they hold their ears and what they do with their mouth, as to — are they scared? Are they upset? It's like you learn a foreign language, well you crawl into a bear’s den, you've gotta understand the bear’s language.
Shelby Herbert
Oh my gosh, I, I could not imagine. It's massive respect for what you guys do. And you, you mentioned you've been doing this for about 30 years. What got you started in the bear business?
Ann Bryant
Well, back years ago I've always been a wildlife specialist and worked with rescuing and caring for all native species. About 25 to 30 years ago we started seeing more bears and then there was a killing by the California Department of Wildlife of a mother bear and had orphaned her cubs because the tourists came and were afraid because there was a bear. And so the department back then, they just would kill them. There were no trash ordinances. Everybody just did as they pleased. And it was just like total carnage on the bear. So we founded our organization with the intent to train people in every neighborhood and then get the calls to come into us because we're right here and we have boots on the ground and then we can go out and help people rather than them calling and having the bears killed.
Ann Bryant
So most people do call us, we get 23 calls every time one of the Departments of Wildlife gets one call. So we get most of the calls and we're able to respond. There's a lot of times when we need help from the Department of Wildlife or Nevada Department of Wildlife, so we work with them when we need them, but normally we can just take care of it ourselves. We do not believe in lethal management. We believe that there's always a better way to do that. It doesn't do any good at all to kill a bear without fixing the problem. Because then, another bear is just gonna come and you had one bear dead, and now you're gonna have another bear dead. And you haven't fixed the problem. We want to teach people how to coexist with animals. It might be a little bit of effort for some people, especially if they don't like the bears. But it works. There are ways to coexist.
Shelby Herbert
Definitely. So around this time last year, Hank the Tank was in national news.
VOICEOVER: Hey, there! This is your host, in “post.” For those of you who missed the 2021 Hank the Tank coverage, or otherwise forgot, Hank was a 500 pound adult male black bear — an absolute unit. He stood accused of breaking into up to 30 Lake Tahoe homes in search of food. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife said that Hank had lost his fear of people. But there’s a little more to the story.
What is your prescription for problem bears? If not lethal force and maybe something like relocation, how would you approach those?
Ann Bryant
We don't believe in the term problem bears or nuisance bears, We think that's disrespectful. They're bears just being bears and all they're doing is looking for opportunities and people give him the opportunities usually. But Hank was not even the guilty bear. So they were blaming him because he was so big. But it was actually two separate mother bears and two juvenile bears that were doing everything that Hank was being blamed for. I mean, if they would've killed him, it wouldn't have accomplished anything except for you'd have this big happy bear dead and still have the bears that were guilty out there. We also don't have a lot of faith in relocation because there's been a lot of studies. Nevada even did some on relocation and it's been determined that unless it's a juvenile just dispersing from his mother and out looking for his own territory anyway, that's really the only time that you can take him and relocate them and they'll just settle in.
If you take a bear away from his home range where he's lived his whole life, he knows every tree, he knows where every body of water is, he knows where every berry bush is. You take him and bring him somewhere else. It's like, it would be like me picking you up and plopping you on the moon and saying: “Okay Shelby, go for it.” Go make a good living. Well you're gonna wanna come home. Bears wanna come home. And sometimes quite often they die trying. So it's a death sentence. It sounds like a happily ever after, but it really isn't. And we don't think that it's a solution at all.
Shelby Herbert
Thank you so much for that clarification. So kind of on that note of displacement, I spoke with a rep from NDOW recently and there have been increased numbers of human wildlife conflicts in the Tahoe area and in the Great basin in general. Part of that is bears returning to their historical habitat, but the other part of that is human development. Is what you're seeing right now in your work with these bear-human encounters lining up with your experience?
Ann Bryant
That's absolutely what is happening. There are more and more and more people coming into the Tahoe Basin and a lot of 'em are, they're coming from the city and they have a city mentality. They're moving into a wilderness area where bears are an apex animal here. The presence of bears in the Tahoe forest is a good sign. It means it's a healthy forest. So we need the bears here and they do a lot of good things. But these people, a lot of them have not prepared for that. And they're scared. They don't understand the bears – they're confusing. Our black bears with grizzly bears and grizzly bears are much more aggressive and much more dangerous. And we don't have grizzlies here at Tahoe, nowhere in Nevada or California do we have grizzlies, but people don't even realize that. And our bears, a lot of the time, are brown.
So they think they're seeing a grizzly bear and they just panic. They're not willing to do what they need to avoid having a problem or they don't even think about it. Like I said earlier, some of the calls we had this morning were people who forgot to lock their door and they went on vacation. So it's a lot of complete apathy or ignorance or unconcern on the part of a lot of the people. And we think educate them, just constantly let them know, okay, you're in bear country now. You have chosen to come into bear country whether you're just vacationing or you're gonna live here. There are things you need to understand. I mean, when guests come out, we want them to have a good time. We don't want them to have a bear come into their kitchen when they're in the living room and they're scared to death and they just want to check out and leave.
But yeah, more people and bears coming back to where they've always been and there's collisions and it doesn't have to be that way, but that's kind of why we are here is to work towards solving that. And that's what the two Departments of Wildlife do too. They try to help people understand the difference between us is that they will quickly kill a bear and we think you gotta take a little more time to make people step up and do their part and let the bear live because a dead bear can't teach anybody anything. It's just like, okay: give the bears respect. Tell people okay: they are there, they belong there. We want them to be there, we want you to be there too. But you have to be smart and it's awfully difficult for some people to be smarter than the bears.
Shelby Herbert
For sure. For sure. What are the most common mistakes you see people making in bear country?
Ann Bryant
Shelby, there are so many. I think the biggies are unsecured trash bird feeders. Putting bird feeders all over in the yard that bears, that's their favorite food. Trash and bird feeders.
Shelby Herbert
I'm a birder. Like what? Are there any alternatives to regular bird feeders that are…
Ann Bryant
No. Anything, anything. Bears are omnivores. They'll eat anything. So if you're, if you're putting bird eat out, you're inviting the bears and you're offering the bears a meal. So you, you can still do it, but you wanna get it away from your front door, get it out in the yard, put it out there late, put it on the ground, let the birds come and get it real quickly first thing in the morning. They clean it all up and then don't put it out anymore. You can still feed the birds, but you can't just hang buckets while birds need,
Shelby Herbert
You know, right next to your house.
Ann Bryant
Right, exactly. Yeah. I mean the bears are gonna take you up on it. So that's one of 'em. And then not securing the doors and windows and having trash outside, eating outside and leaving the leftovers from your picnic. You have to constantly be thinking that there is a bear or two that's hiding behind a tree and you can't see him, but he's there and he's waiting for you to make a mistake and it's worth his time because most people are ultimately gonna make a mistake. They're going to unpack the groceries out of the car and leave the car open with half the groceries still in the car. They're gonna come in the house and then they're gonna make a quick phone call and they're gonna forget, Oh, I left the car door open and the groceries are in. When they finally go back out, guess who got the groceries? A bear is either eating or when he is sleeping, he's dreaming about eating. So they are eating machines. And if you can constantly remember that, it's not like you have to focus on it, but let that be a guide in everything you do. You aren't gonna have any problems.
Shelby Herbert
Sure. It's pretty much a giant raccoon…
Ann Bryant
Well, they're more intent on eating than raccoons are, but I like to compare them with a chipmunk. As far as they're always hoarding, they're always gathering up and eating and eating, and they're so scared, they will run away. Just stomp your foot, throw a pine cone at their rump, yell at them: “Get outta here!” They’re big, scared chipmunks. Don't be afraid of the bear. Make the bear afraid of you because if you're afraid of the bear, you're not gonna do anything right. You're gonna run and hide it in your closet and the bear's gonna think you gave him your territory. Whereas if you stand up to them in your territorial and you're aggressive, he's gonna respect you and he's gonna leave your property alone. But too many people have been told to be fearful and that is what's causing the battle to be lost because people that are fearful are not reacting at all appropriately. And the bears are taking advantage of them.
Shelby Herbert
Kind of looking back to these newcomers to the Tahoe area or maybe even tourists — who might be afraid and might not have the level of appreciation for this animal's role in its ecosystem. What would you say to this person?
Ann Bryant
We have a lot of that. Shelby, you would be, They've called me. I'm just so afraid. I am just scared to death. I'm too afraid to even go outside now. One person had just bought a house up here and the real estate agent didn't mention that there were bears, she should have known. But she found out there were bears and she was so scared she was gonna sue the real estate agent. Oh my god, you sound like a really nice person and I'd like for you to stay here and I wanna help you. And so we would talk on the phone and I asked her to go on some bear calls with me. She was too scared to do that, but I just kept kind of talking to her and she was a super nice person, but she just had a total phobia and she would call me and just ask some questions. And we were friends, and one day she called and she was completely different in her countenance. She said, “You're not going to believe what happened.”
Ann Bryant
You just aren't gonna believe this. She said, I was finally brave enough to go out in my yard and sit in my chase and I was reading a book. She had a garden, a beautiful garden. And she said, You had me to where I could at least do that. I wasn't just hiding in my living room. So she said, all of a sudden I heard a noise and I turned and looked and coming down the path, coming right towards where I was sitting was a great big bear. She said, I froze. I went into a state of fear to where I couldn't even breathe and I'm trying to think, what would Ann say? What would Ann say? She said, I didn't even have time to or couldn't do anything. And all of a sudden a little squirrel ran in front of the bear across the path, started right in front of the bear, saw the squirrel, jumped up while he was in the air, made a 180 landed and ran outta my yard.
The squirrel had scared him away and she said, I laughed and then I realized I don't need to be afraid of these bears. They're scared of a little squirrel, I'm not gonna be afraid of them anymore. And from then on she's been just fine. Sometimes you have to experience it. I mean it doesn't do any good for me to tell people, don't be afraid. They're not gonna hurt you. Just be sensible. They have to get used to it and once they do, they develop an appreciation and then they can comfortably go hiking and be outside. You just gotta put that fear aside and enjoy being here, and it can work.
Shelby Herbert
Absolutely. Thank you so much Ann. I think this is a great note to close out on. I have one more hardball for you. I just wanted to know, so you've, you've worked with two different state agencies that manage these natural resources, that manage the wildlife. Do you have any parting thoughts about how that's going? Like how well are state governments dealing with this issue?
Ann Bryant
I see changes and I've seen recently, like within the last five years. There are some amazing and really encouraging changes on the California side. Rather than give a declaration permit just like that — super easy — it has to be investigated. The person has to have done everything possible to avoid having a problem. If the onus is on the person, they don't just give out depredation permits and kill bears. Not like they used to do, which was very easily. And Nevada's doing a much better job in our opinion as well. So I think the state agencies are realizing that really by killing bears and making them seem like a nuisance or like their lives are not valuable, you're not teaching people to respect them. You can't teach people to love them, but you can ask people and you can insist on people respecting them as being a fellow cohabitate of where we all are.
And I think by reducing the numbers of killing and only killing when they think it's just absolutely the bear did something egregious. But to just kill them, like they're mosquitoes? That gives people the wrong message. So I think both states are kind of stepping up on that and they're realizing that they're gonna actually make more progress if they tell people: “Look, we're not gonna just kill bears for you. You have to do your part and you have to do certain things to dissuade the bears from wanting to be a burden to you because they belong here.” Like I said, we've seen some definite progress being made, some really good people in both departments. I I think it's only going to get better.
Shelby Herbert
Awesome. Thank you so much for your time Ann, as well as all of your efforts over the past three decades to conserve this amazing keystone species.
Ann Bryant
It's just such an honor to be here with you, and you've done a really good job on getting some of the points out. I'd also like to say we're always here. We have a 24/7 hotline. We have a lot of information on our website. But we're happy to help. We're here. We handle the whole Tahoe Basin. We've got teams of 250 trained people that can respond to bear calls and if we need to, we bring in the departments to help as well. So, we got it covered. We're here for ya.
Shelby Herbert
Thanks for joining me today, folks. I, for one, was devastated to find out that bird feeders can attract bears. Check out the links in the episode description for further enrichment on living in bear country. Stay safe and don't forget they were here first. I'm Shelby Herbert and this is your cheerful reminder that you inhabit a dying planet. Don't stop talking about it.
Episode II: Urban Bears