The Nevada Department of Wildlife say they captured a three to four year old male black bear at Incline Village on Sunday, October 9 in the morning and they released that bear Monday morning at Tahoe Meadows, near Mt. Rose Summit.
NDOW says they were attempting to trap a different bear that had damaged a building while attempting to reach the area underneath. Carl Lackey says that the bear they did catch had been handled once before in the mountains east of the Tahoe Basin. “We captured him in Little Valley during a research project in 2015 when he was about two years old. We’ll release him today and apply aversive conditioning, including the use of Karelian bear dogs. Hopefully this will dissuade him from coming back to urban areas.”
Lackey is cautioning Lake Tahoe residents that bears are not ready to hibernate yet, and will be searching for places to hibernate. “People in the Lake Tahoe Basin need to make sure they secure crawl spaces in order to keep bears from getting underneath houses. They can do a lot of damage to a dwelling's infrastructure if allowed access to crawl spaces.”
NDOW also warns that this is also the time of year that bears increase the amount of food needed to “pile on the fat” for winter, and bears will increase their daily caloric intake from 3,000 calories per day to upwards of 25,000 calories per day.
NDOW says bears will search far and wide in the hunt for food. “They will eat up to 20 hours per day during a full moon period as they pile on the fat,” stressed Lackey. “People living in bear country should not be tempting these already hungry bears with easy access to garbage, bird feeders, bowls of pet food or ripened fruit falling from trees.”
Authorities say areas most at risk of attracting bears, by granting access to garbage and other attractants, are the Tahoe Basin, west Carson City and the foothill areas of Douglas and Washoe Counties.
Persons needing to report nuisance bear activity can call the NDOW’s Bear Hotline telephone number at (775) 688-BEAR (2327). For information on living with bears persons can go to www.ndow.org and find the ”Bear Logic” page on the web.
