Columnist Susan Snyder: Region has bear of a problem

Monday, June 7, 2004 | 10:35 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

Carl Lackey's problem this spring is a bear.

Actually, it's a bunch of bears. Black bears are pawing through Northern Nevadans' garbage at an alarming rate this spring. Lackey, a wildlife biologist with the Nevada Department of Wildlife, says officers have responded to some 80 calls for bear activity since mid-February.

"We've always had a lot of bears. But the same bears are causing more problems," Lackey said Friday.

Bears living in the Sierra Nevada mountains straddling the Nevada-California border around Lake Tahoe typically hibernate until early March. But more of them are waking up earlier, and some aren't sleeping through winter at all because unsecured garbage is providing an abundant, year-round food source.

"We are seeing an ecological change in the animals," he said. "The garbage is predictable. It comes out every Wednesday."

Of course, it would be a boo-boo to say that the Lake Tahoe basin has a Yogi problem. The problem is people. They fail to keep garbage in bear-proof containers.

In all fairness, it's not required of them. Douglas is the only Nevada county with an ordinance regarding bear-proof containers. It says the state may require a resident to purchase a bear-proof container, but only if a bear incident is reported after wildlife officers have issued a warning, Lackey said.

The warning is issued after an initial incident. So it takes at least two reports of bear damage, and even then there's no guarantee the resident will be required to get one of the containers, Lackey said.

When problem bear is reported, Lackey said officers drug the bear, tag it, take some hair and other biological samples then release it in the same spot where it was reported.

Then they do "aversion therapy" -- shoot the bear with rubber pellets, chase it with a dog bred for chasing bears and otherwise try to scare it away from ever returning to that place. This works better than transporting the bear somewhere else in hopes it won't come back, which doesn't work at all, Lackey said.

"A hundred percent of relocated bears return to the capture site. We took one from South Lake Tahoe to Hawthorne. And in two weeks, it was back," he said.

That's a journey of about 190 miles as the crow flies, or the bear rambles, or whatever.

Bear-proof containers are made of quarter-inch-thick metal and have paw-proof latches on the lids. they are mounted in a manner that prevents bears from tipping them. At $300 to $1,000 each, they aren't cheap. But it's cheaper than replacing the wall of a house.

Lackey e-mailed recent photos from Glenbrook, a community on Lake Tahoe's Nevada side. The garage door of one home was completely splintered. The wall of another home was torn out by a bear seeking access to the garbage can under the kitchen sink.

Still, residents seem clueless. They place rocks atop plastic trash cans or secure the tops with elastic cords. Even over the telephone, it was obvious Lackey was grinning about the bungee cord.

"It wouldn't keep a squirrel out," he said. "A couple of weeks ago, we had a bear that bit through a car door and peeled it open and just trashed the inside."