I like nature and wildlife and support efforts to preserve both but prefer to view them from a safe distance. Not for me safaris and camping and hiking in the wilderness in the hope of seeing wildlife. Nature documentaries are more my thing.
My aversion to seeing nature up close was enhanced by this article about how black bears have become very common in the very popular (and expensive) resort area of Lake Tahoe that is in the Sierra Nevada mountain region and straddles northern California and Nevada. During the pandemic, a lot of Silicon Valley types moved there and took advantage of the work-from-home policy to decide to stay permanently. But the increase in population and the garbage generated has attracted black bears that now roam the streets of towns and invade homes and cars looking for food. The problem is exacerbated by those the locals call ‘tourons’, a portmanteau of ‘tourist’ and ‘morons’, who are careless about keeping food out of reach and act in ways that attract bears.
Unlike grizzly bears that can be aggressive and vicious, black bears supposedly tend to avoid confrontations and can be scared away fairly easily.
When someone sees a bear on their lawn, or at their door, or in their kitchen, it can be hard to remember, in the moment, that the average black bear can be treed by a Chihuahua, and that a bear’s huffing, bluff-charging, grunting, and teeth-clacking are usually nothing more than messages to back off. The correct human response is confidence and noise. Yell. Raise your arms-look big. Never turn your back on a bear. Stand your ground but also slowly retreat. Never block a bear’s exit-bears leave the same way they came in.
Good advice no doubt but one must always keep in mind that these are big critters who have very sharp claws and can run as fast as Usain Bolt. What if one is simply having a bad day and wants to lash out and you happen to be the nearest living thing around? My own preference is to not live anywhere that is likely to have bears casually show up. Having to first cautiously take a look before stepping outside one’s home or car would take a lot of the fun out of living in such places, however nice they may be otherwise.
(A bear in the parking lot of a Whole Foods in South Lake Tahoe)
In reading the article, I learned some interesting facts about bears though, especially that they are voracious eaters and are ingenious at finding and getting at food.
Black bears, which can be brown, reddish, or blond, are defensive and lazy, smart and resilient, ravenous and opportunistic. All they really want to do is eat. They lived mostly on grasses, berries, and insects until humans showed up. Why spend all day dismantling a yellow-jacket nest for the paltry reward of larvae when there’s dumpster pizza to be had?
Even if something is not edible, bears will try to eat it-scented air fresheners, cherry lip balm. The black bear is the terrestrial equivalent of a shark, the sharpest nose in the ocean; its sense of smell is seven times better than a bloodhound’s, several thousand times better than a human’s. A bear that detects so much as a Tic Tac will remember the location of that score forever-and teach it to her cubs.
…In autumn, bears enter hyperphagia: they must eat at least twenty thousand calories (the equivalent of thirty-six Big Macs) a day before they den. The females are on a deadline to store enough fat to sustain themselves, and a pregnancy, until spring, though in Tahoe, where there’s plenty of touron food year-round, bears hardly have to hibernate anymore. Bears have learned how to unscrew lids. They know how to open sliding glass doors. They’ll prowl from car to car, trying handles. Ryan Welch, the founder of Tahoe’s oldest bear-deterrent company, Bear Busters, told me about a woman who reported her Prius missing; the police found the car at the bottom of the hill that she’d parked it on, with a bear inside. Bears have learned that they can wander onto a crowded beach and help themselves to picnic food, with humans standing feet away, casually videoing, and that they can spook hikers into dropping their snack-filled packs. This spring, a bear snatched a construction worker’s cooler from the bed of a pickup and ate the man’s lunch in front of him. A Tahoe friend of mine once turned her back while unloading groceries and lost a fifteen-pound Christmas roast; the bear left nothing but a greasy scrap of butcher paper in the driveway.
These bears are very strong and can break into pretty much anything, including homes and cars, with their sharp claws.
A black bear’s short, curved claws function as miniature crowbars, capable of leveraging the slightest crevice to pry open a window or shred a garage door. An unsecured crawl space is an invitation. A bear will make confetti of a doorjamb. In vacant houses-which are plentiful in resort communities like Tahoe-bears turn on faucets and burners, usually by bumbling into them. Last year, a utility-company employee noticed a spike in water use at one home; bears had moved in. “They had defecated everywhere. The walls and carpet were covered in mold,” another state employee said at Bear Fest. Bears that den beneath homes and businesses can dislodge insulation and wiring, some of which keeps the pipes from freezing. Bears are “capable of breaking down anything they want” in their quest for calories, Welch told me. “There’s nothing bear-proof-I don’t care how thick a door is, or if it’s metal. I describe a bear as a five-hundred-pound police battering ram.”
This is why I live in urban areas and would not dream of moving to Lake Tahoe however beautiful I am told it is, even if I could afford to. The idea that I may casually run into a bear on the street is something I do not relish. Where I live now, the biggest danger consists of ticked-off turkeys. I’ll let others commune closely with nature and the bears and then tell me about the experience.
Urban wildlife is nothing new to me. I lived near downtown in a midsized Alberta city and often had moose in my front yard. In Victoria, BC deer were ubiquitous throughout the city and we occasionally had cougars. In suburban Vancouver I’ve stepped out the door and come face to face with a bear in the driveway trying to break into the locked garbage bin. When it saw me it just grunted and ambled off to the neighbours to try theirs. They can be seen in the neighborhood several times a year, particularly in the fall. Municipal bylaw requires garbage bins to be kept locked until garbage pickup day, but bears will try to bust them open anyway.
And there are urban coyotes everywhere.
All that city-people advice about dealing with bears is hilarious.
A friend who worked as a campground ranger in Yosemite Valley for a few years has much to say about the resourcefulness of bears (there, they actually break car windows if they can see a cooler through a window) and the unreasonableness of visitors who don’t believe that the creatures will come into your camp when you’re not looking and make off with unattended food, or even whole unattended coolers, a few feet from you. At a rural place we lived at for a few years California’s Eastern Sierra, a neighbor insisted on putting her trash out the night before pickup, and was repeatedly dismayed to find that bears had made a mess dining from it that night. (I get not expecting it the first time, but after that…)
At least once, a few years ago, particularly troublesome bears from the Tahoe area were relocated to remote mountains east of the Sierras. The Tahoe bears are ALL particularly troublesome now. Or rather, the bears are being bears and the humans are being particularly troublesome.
Mine too. The UK is a good choice. Our largest land carnivore is the badger.
I’d be interested to see the stats on how many people near you have been killed or injured by turkeys, compared with how many have been killed or injured by cops. Or any other armed humans, for that matter.
Where I live, there are urban areas and very rural areas. People keep encroaching on the rural areas and then they’re outraged when they see wildlife like bears and deer (who are very destructive and can be belligerent).
Thanks for the information about black bears, Mano. It’s impressive how smart and resilient they are.
Apologies for being off topic below.
I was expecting some post from Mano about the Biden-Biden pardon and am disappointed to not find one.
Staying away from bears is a very smart strategy. I live right across the street from a national forest, so we see bears from time to time, maybe feeding on berries at the side of the road -- and we usually see people with very poor decision-making skills trying to approach the bear for a photo or whatever. Who knows what that sort of person thinks. It’s amazing to me that more people don’t end up getting mauled. I suppose it’s the good nature of the bears, it most certainly is not due to the intelligent actions of the humans, who really must try the patience of even a bear.
The brown bears in Europe are temperamentally more like your black bears, mostly harmless (but you should nevertheless give big wild animals a wide berth, even the herbovorous ones).
Ha! Obvious nonsense. Next they’ll be telling us the Pope is a Buddhist!
birgerjohansson #8
Black bears in Canada are not remotely “mostly harmless”.
The are aggressive and belligerent and f*ing dangerous.
My apologies. I realised I posted a reply too many at the “Sarah McBride For President” thread. Too much enthusiasm!
This is not the Pharyngula site, sonething that is easy to forget because the commentariat overlaps. My bad.
Obviously you threaten the bear with a broom and shout perkele at it untill it leaves you alone.
There is a wide variation of aggressive behaviour among individual bears, so you should never take them for granted. Big animal = get out of the way. But don’t trigger the hunting instinct by turning your back on them and running.
Hell, cougars are much smaller and they can mess you up bad!
@Trickster Goddess:
A lot of my family lives on the Saanich peninsula just north of Victoria, and yeah, deer are everywhere. Not helped by the fact that they’re supposed to be a protected species so hunting is not allowed, and the deer have got comfortable with that.
My uncle had a small orchard with yellow ornamental plums. Deer would show up and eat the plums pretty regularly if he didn’t pick them quickly enough. Sometimes they would eat the ones that had already fallen on the ground and started rotting, which would result in drunk deer staggering around his orchard.
Bears are capable of doing some serious injury to a human, but luckily the black bears generally try to avoid humans while they attempt to take any food or search the trash for edibles. Grizzlies and Polar bears are a bit more aggressive, but all of them could maul a squishy human with one swipe.
Friends who live in bear country keep any stinky trash in the freezer until just before pickup, as the bears kept destroying the small purpose built shed and broke into the garage in their quest to steal the trash bins.
Walking into your garage to meet a startled bear is best avoided. They might decide you’re a threat, especially a mom with cubs.