FEEDING THE BEARS
There’s a growing controversy at Lake Tahoe where some people are feeding wild bears in the woods. Coming up this Monday night at 11, only on NBC11, you’ll see exclusive video of animal activists hiking into the forest to drop off food supplies for the bears…bears that are very hungry because of the drought and recent wildfires.
At Lake Tahoe there’s been a spike in home invasions – not from people, but black bears. Many bears are breaking into homes and cabins in search of food – we visited one home near Emerald Bay where a wild bear had busted through the front door and raided the refrigerator, leaving a massive mess behind.
We also met a caretaker for dozens of vacation homes near Tahoe City, where bear invasions are happening every week. Jimmy Nichols told me, “Black bear invasions – I’ve done probably 50 repair jobs in here.”
In California, it’s illegal to feed wild bears, even on private property. But we found some Tahoe travelers willing to let us document their secret feedings because they believe they are retraining the bears to find food in the forest.
On the day we came to visit, it only took only a few minutes to find some wild bears attracted to the food buried in the woods. One of the bears we saw up close and personal weighed about 500 pounds – another was a 150 pound cub.
But are the secret feedings helping or hurting the bears?
We’ll let you be the judge.
Check out the war over Black Bears, at 11pm on Monday, October 8.
And in the meantime, you can check out this slide show of black bears at Lake Tahoe.
http://www.nbc11.com/slideshow/news/14230918/detail.html?qs=1;s=1;p=news&dm=ss&tn=b
