Worried about a California bear encounter? Here’s how to keep them out of your home

To try to reduce the conflicts in the Tahoe Basin and elsewhere in California, the Department of Fish and Wildlife last year started an information campaign called “The Bear Naked Truth,” intended to educate residents and visitors on how to reduce bear conflicts.

The advice includes locking up trash in bear-proof bins, removing all food from vehicles and securing homes to prevent break ins.

DFW biologist Jason Holley said it’s also a good idea to close all blinds in homes so that a bear can’t see a fridge or cupboards and to make sure doors, even the locked ones, don’t wiggle in any way.

“A bear will test it and if it gives a little bit, then they push more, and if you’ve got a 500-pound boar pushing on that thing, it doesn’t take much work to blow the jam out,” he said. Male bears are called “boars.”

Some homeowners have hired companies to install electrical wiring around their buildings to keep the bears out.

“That seems to be one of the best methods,” Holley said. “However, I will give you the caveat that once a bear reaches a certain level of habituation, these measures aren’t that effective.”

Meanwhile, Holley’s department has been trapping bears in Tahoe to determine which ones are the repeat offenders.

The bear’s ear is pierced with a numbered ear tag before it’s sent on its way, usually after a few painful paintball gun shots to reinforce the notion that humans should be avoided.

“We call this giving them tough love to, you know, let them let them know that it’s not really cool to hang around people,” Holley said.

Before the bear’s release, the biologists collect DNA samples from the bear’s saliva, hair and blood to later be compared with samples collected following a home break-in where the bear burglar fled the scene.

“We really want to try to delineate the bears that are fully habituated from those that maybe just wandered in, maybe because they’re escaping a fire or trying to find resources because of the drought,” Holley said.

He said those unhabituated bears are the ones that measures such as electric fences, motion-detectable sprinklers, barking-dog alarms or even banging pots and pans can scare away.

On Sept. 17, Holley’s department reported that over the previous week, seven Tahoe bears have been trapped, tagged and released; four in South Lake and three on the West Shore.