Columnist Susan Snyder: Human contact is unbearable

Monday, Nov. 8, 2004 | 8:15 a.m.

Early dumps of snow in the Sierra Nevadas have ski areas priming their lifts and Southern Nevada skiers dragging out their gear earlier than usual.

But while early snowfall makes Lake Tahoe-area mountain towns more inviting, it also makes foraging more difficult for the region's bear population.

And where there are people, there is garbage. So where there is garbage, there are hungry bears. And all too often, unfortunately, the latter proves a deadly mix. For the bear.

"The majority of bears dying is because of the interface with humans," Mike Wolterbeek, Washoe County spokesman, said Friday. "Their best place to get food is where we live."

During the last week of October a man staying at the Reindeer Lodge, just north of Lake Tahoe, told the North Lake Tahoe Bonanza newspaper he was sleeping when a bear crashed through his front door. The man fired four shots at the animal, which ran off.

"We followed it," Carl Lackey, a biologist and bear specialist with the Nevada Department of Wildlife, said Friday. "The blood trail ran out, but he (the bear) kept on going. My guess is he'll be OK. But it's hard to tell."

It's not the only bear recently injured by contact with humans. A pair of cubs were struck and killed Tuesday on State Route 50 between Incline Village and Stateline, he said. And a mother bear was struck by a car just outside Incline Village two weeks ago.

"She had a cub with her," Lackey said. "She was mortally injured. I had to put her down." He took her cub to a rescue organization.

But none of these bears would likely have wandered into harm's way and urban areas if they hadn't been conditioned to finding food there.

Nevada's Douglas County and California counties surrounding Lake Tahoe all have ordinances that, on various levels, require bear-proof garbage cans or impose fines on people who leave garbage out where it will attract the animals.

But Washoe County is still dickering over the details. Right now, there are no requirements or penalties for leaving garbage out in the open where it will attract bears.

"Why Washoe doesn't want to deal with the problem, I don't know," Lackey said.

It's not all easy to explain, Walterbeek said. A task force of residents and experts, such as Lackey, has been working for more than a year to determine whether an ordinance would solve the problem and how far such a rule should reach.

A countywide rule that would force residents whose neighborhoods have no bear incidents to purchase a $500 to $1,000 bear-proof trash can hardly seems fair, he said.

"Do we target only the people who cause a problem? Do we require it when people do renovations or build new? We want to make sure it (an ordinance) is tailored correctly for the community that's impacted," he said.

Meanwhile, county and Incline Village General Improvement District officials will step up education efforts to people who live in and visit Nevada's bear country.

"I've seen bear-proof garbage containers, and people on vacation put the garbage to the containers on the ground," Walterbeek said.

Jeepers, are we really that dumb?

Unfortunately for one orphaned bear cub, we are.