Bears in the Backyard

A 700-pound black bear is reportedly breaking into Lake Tahoe homes, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

A gigantic, bullet-scarred black bear with a hankering for human food and a knack for breaking and entering has been terrorizing homeowners on the north shore of Lake Tahoe and deftly outmaneuvering gun-toting rangers, bear dogs and traps.

I’ve read about bears breaking into homes, but this one, well, must be setting records:

Wildlife officials have tried everything, but the food junkie apparently knows a bear trap when he sees one, shakes off bullets like they were mosquito bites, and keeps coming back for more. ”He’s busted into probably 40 or 50 homes,” said Carl Lackey, a bear biologist for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

Fred J. Aun, writing in The Star-Ledger, states the obvious: The election of Republican Chris Christie as governor makes a bear hunt a lot more likely. Gov. Jon Corzine opposed the hunt, and Christie seems a lot more conciliatory toward hunters. Aun says a restored bear hunt “would be a big deal mainly because the bear hunt, more than any other issue, brought to the fore the divide in New Jersey between pro-hunting-and-fishing wildlife conservationists and the anti-hunting (and, sometimes, anti-fishing) animal-rights contingent.”

But hold on a minute here… Is this really an accurate portrayal of things? That the hunters are “wildlife conservationists” and those against bear hunting are simply an “animal-rights contingent”? The return of bears to New Jersey is an amazing story, and it didn’t happen because of hunting; it happened, in part, because of a lack of hunting. Sure, the story is far more complex than that, but plenty of people, myself included, remain wary of the idea of a bear hunt in New Jersey. And being wary of a bear hunt doesn’t mean we’re part of any anti-hunting contingent.

Black bears, a protected species in Texas, may be making a comeback there, according to a newspaper report.

The report in the Courier of Montgomery County says bears used to be common in the area: “In the 1800s there is documentation that a good hunter could harvest perhaps a hundred in his or her lifetime. But from 1950 until about 2000, they were rarely seen in east Texas.”

And now they may be traveling over from Louisiana, or maybe Arkansas or Oklahoma: “Estimates on the number of black bears in East Texas vary. Some say as few as 20 are currently roaming this part of the state. Others say there could be as many as 100.”

Plenty of states have policies to euthanize bears after they break into homes, or attempt to do so.

That’s just what happened to a bear near Shreveport, Louisiana, as well as one in Veneta, Oregon.

About the Oregon bear:

State wildlife officials determined that because the bear was hanging around a house and knocking open a door, the bear was a potential threat to human safety.

The meat from the “carcass was salvaged and donated to help feed the hungry,” according to the story.

Two guys are driving along the highway. They see a dead bear. Roadkill.

What do they do?

They take it home to cut it into steaks.

That’s the gist of a story from the News-Journal, in Florida.

According to the story: “Two Orange City men who picked up a dead Florida black bear from Interstate 4, skinned it and cut it up into steak-sized chunks, quickly regretted their decision to butcher the threatened species, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission official said Monday.” The official noted: “It’s against the law to do that. You can’t possess bear parts in Florida. Black bears are a threatened species.”

But the men apparently realized their error after hearing a news report and turned themselves in to the authorities.

Sometimes I just love the little conversational tidbits as homeowners video the bears on their property. That’s just what you’ll get in this video, with a couple talking about the bear and three cubs in their yard. You’ll also get to see some quick climbing by the cubs.

Whistler (in British Columbia, Canada) is a hotspot for bears. In this video, two bears are having a blast as they cavort in Whistler yards.

According to an AP story at WDAM.com, a wildlife agent killed an aggressive Louisiana black bear.

The story says:

A news release Wednesday said the bear once tried to break into a house and later took a deer carcass from a freezer in an unoccupied shop. The statement says it was shot on Nov. 30 because the aggressive behavior and lack of fear of people—and its evasion of traps, snares and bear dogs—raised worries about public safety…. State wildlife agents needed federal approval to shoot the bear, since the Louisiana black bear was designated a threatened species in 1992.

What would you do if a black bear showed up on your porch?