Food Drops For Bear In Lake Tahoe?

The Lake Tahoe-based BEAR League wants to drop food out in the backcountry in order to draw problem bears, that is hungry ones in search of food, away from human populated areas. With a hot dry summer, there is not enough natural food for bears, who this time of year are attempting to gorge themselves with food in order to layer the body fat in preparation for the upcoming winter. With the lack of food, it has forced bears into town in search of human food, anything they can get their hands on, and this has caused some problems.

According to the San Jose Mercury News –

“We are going to do backcountry food drops, putting natural food back into the backcountry,” Bryant (Ann Bryant, executive director of the Lake Tahoe-based BEAR League) told Truckee’s Sierra Sun newspaper. “We have hundreds and hundreds of pounds of food we plan to put in several locations that won’t bring the bears near neighborhoods.”

But this idea isn’t necessarily sitting that well with California fish and game biologist, Jason Holley.

“It’s an unnatural situation that forces bears to congregate. Who knows what long-term problems that could create,” Holley said. “If the smell of people is on the food, they could be more likely to associate people with food in the future, and they could become more susceptible to hunters.”

Holley says he doesn’t think there is really any real solution to this problem and that people just need to learn to deal with it. It may even exacerbate the problem. Holley thinks human smell will be all over the food that gets dropped and bears will just continue to make the association. One has to consider if it would, in the long run, makes things worse.

Bryant claims similar programs have been successful in other states, citing Alaska and Montana as two of them.

Tom Remington