LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Wildlife officials generally issue reminders to the public to be “bear aware” in the spring as California's black bears emerge from the winter season.
In fall, motorists are encouraged to be particularly aware of wild animals on highways during mating season.
However, recent issues in Lake County and other parts of California are a reminder that bears are on the move throughout the year.
Last week, four bears were reported to be hit by cars in Yosemite National Park and in Truckee a bear walked onto a golf course during a PGA event.
Over the past month, there also have been extensive reports of issues with bears in and around Lassen National Park, where portions of the park were closed to camping due to foraging bears.
In Lake County, there have been isolated issues with bears during recent months.
On June 2 at about 6 p.m., the California Highway Patrol’s Clear Lake Area office received a call that a bear cub had been hit by a car on Highway 20 near Paradise Cove, according to CHP Officer Joel Skeen.
Then, on June 23, two vehicles hit a bear shortly before 10 p.m. on Highway 29 at Diener Drive near Lower Lake. Skeen said the bear was killed but the motorists were uninjured.
Skeen also noted that CHP took a call in the middle of the afternoon on June 22 involving a black bear walking on the beach in Glenhaven. He said that call was transferred to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
“I don’t recall the last time I’ve had a bear hit on the highway in Lake County,” said Josh Bush, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife unit wildlife biologist for Lake, Colusa and Yolo counties. “It is much more of an occurrence in Tahoe where the bears are much more habituated to people and there’s a larger density of bears.”
Bush said issues with bears – especially on Lake County’s Northshore, where they’re prevalent – is nothing new.
“I’ve had issues with bears in Glenhaven and Paradise Cove for the past seven years,” he said.
This year, however, has actually seen an overall decrease in bear-human issues locally, Bush said. “I got zero calls for that area, which is unusual.”
Bears are more common in the Northshore communities, Bush explained, because they’re adjacent to wildland and the Mendocino National Forest.
The narrow strip of houses along Northshore is more prone to bear incidents because it’s right up against the shoreline and the forest, he said.
In winter, the bears have cubs. Bush said the bears that call Lake County home don’t hibernate. “They do decrease their metabolic demands during the winter.”
When he’s seen bear problems with people, it is usually in the springtime. The recent issues with bears were a little later than normal, but Bush said they weren’t surprising because resources are drying up and the weather is hot.
He said they are looking for water and easy sources of food, like garbage and ripening fruit trees, cat food and birdseed.
In May 2019, a black bear that had climbed into a tree in a Lakeport neighborhood was safely removed after it was tranquilized with a chemical dart and then relocated to the South Cow Mountain area.
The following month, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife reported an uptick in bear activity across the state, with other urban bear incidents in Davis, Napa and Rohnert Park.
Bush said he previously captured a bear in Clearlake and moved it. “We will take them to the nearest suitable and available habitat,” he said. “They are adaptable.”
The bears are given ear tags and then wildlife officers let them go on their way. The bears aren’t taken so far away that the habitat would be foreign to them. “They do have the ability to come back,” he said, noting they can travel a long way. However, Bush said he hasn’t had an incident where a bear has returned to the same spot where it was captured.
Across his service area, Bush said Lake County typically has more bear-related issues.
Yolo hasn’t had historically had problems, Bush said, but then over recent years they had two situations with bears in the city of Davis and in the spring of this year a bear named Gilligan was hit on Highway 113.
There have been very few issues in Colusa County. One Bush referred to occurred in 2015, when a bear used the Sacramento River as a corridor and came out in downtown Colusa, where it was safely captured.
Fish and Wildlife says there are three regional black bear subpopulations in California: the North Coast/Cascade, the Sierra and Central Western/Southwestern.
The North Coast/Cascade area, which includes Lake County, covers the area north and west of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and is where about half of the state’s black bear population lives, the agency said.
There aren’t local or regional bear population counts, but Bush said the Department of Fish and Wildlife maintains a statewide estimate of between 25,000 and 36,000 animals, based on a population model.
All indications are that the bear population is rising, he said.
Black bears in California also are a hunted species, he said. “Their season opens concurrently with most general deer seasons,” with a statewide limit of 1,700 bears.
For more information visit the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Keep Me Wild page on bears.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
Black bear sightings locally, around the state a reminder to be ‘bear aware’
- Elizabeth Larson
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