Fun fact about me: I have never seen a bear in the wild. When I was little, I believe I saw a bear or two at a zoo, but never have I ever spied one out in nature. No, not even in Truckee or Tahoe. And yes, many Moonshine Ink staffers have invited me over to see the frequent flier-bears around their homes.
For our edition that spans 2 months of cold and often snowy weather, I checked in with the BEAR League to learn about the bears of our region — assuming they exist, wink, wink — and what their habits are during the winter months.
~ AH
Are local bears still hibernating? What’s the trend?
Tahoe’s bears have taken advantage of year-round access to plentiful food due, in large part, to the inability of many humans to secure their trash, remove food from vehicles, close their kitchen doors or windows, and stop deliberately feeding them. Does this mean they no longer hibernate, though?
BEAR League knows most of the bears in all the neighborhoods around Tahoe, so we understand what they are up to. Therefore, we can honestly say for certain that about 80% of the bears do, indeed, go into a den each winter. Unfortunately, about 150 of them choose to den under homes and summer cabins because people refuse to secure their crawl space openings, with the excuse usually being, “No bear has ever gone under there before.” We also get calls when a hiker or someone on snowshoes finds a bear in the woods sleeping under a huge fallen tree … and this is a good thing, so we usually let sleeping bears lie, unless it’s a well- traveled trail, and then we have to ask them to move to a better location.
Female bears who will be giving birth in late January or early February must go into torpor to gestate their cubs, so they find den sites before the middle of December. Our big males like to wait until after the holidays, most likely in order to profit from the delicious and abundant leftovers the vacationers leave out on the curbside for them. The 2-year-old sub-adults are very likely to find a comfortable location, occasionally their natal den, and crawl in during December. The bears who tend to stay up and forfeit their winter’s nap are the mothers with dependent yearling cubs. They do try, but the cubs are usually playfully rambunctious and unwilling to “settle down” and go to sleep, so Mom finally just gives up and goes out to score the bird seed people put out because they think the bears are all hibernating.
A bear’s state of torpor is quite light, very unlike that of a chipmunk, ground squirrel, or marmot. A denning bear’s heartrate slows down and his breathing is [slower] than normal, but they awaken easily and quickly if they are disturbed. We know this because when homeowners hear loud snoring noises coming from under their homes and call us to investigate (they can tell it’s not a squirrel), we crawl under to come face to face with a bear sitting up and looking alertly straight into our eyes. [Should a bear find shelter under your home,] call us, and we will investigate and go from there after determining exactly what’s going on.
January and February are the most likely time not to see a bear at Lake Tahoe, but on nice, sunny days they will sometimes crawl out of the den, stretch and roll in the snow, lay in the sun’s warm rays for a bit, and then go back in and sleep for another month or two. They start to emerge in early March, the big males first, and lastly the mothers with newborn cubs, who come out in April and introduce their babies to the world.
The BEAR League (savebears.org) is here to help answer questions about bears or solve any problems we can in a non-lethal manner. We do not believe killing bears is a solution and there is no relocation in California, as it doesn’t work. Call us at (530) 525-7297.
~ Ann Bryant, BEAR League executive director
The Tahoe area bear “problem” was the subject of a recent long article in the New Yorker, with Ms. Bryant figuring prominently.