Nevada bear hunt also an economic issue
By Ed Pearce, KOLO-TV
INCLINE VILLAGE — Residents and visitors to Lake Tahoe share the basin with the area’s wildlife including what may be a majority of Nevada’s entire population of 400 to 500 black bears.
Beginning Aug. 20 it will be legal to hunt them here.
That’s welcome news to the small number of hunters who pressed wildlife officials for years for the opportunity, but it’s hard to find anyone cheering in Incline Village on the lake’s north shore.
“We have human-bear problems every year here in Incline Village,” says Bill Hoffman,. the Executive Director of the local visitors bureau. “But we have a lot of bear lovers in this community who don’t want to see these bears hurt or messed with in any way.”
While much of the opposition comes from such sentiment or safety concerns, there are also worries the hunt is simply bad for business.
“People come to see our bears if they can, if they get lucky,” says Hoffman. “It’s something that’s part of what we sell.”
And selling to the tourist is what Incline and most of the lake is all about.
Tourism drives the Tahoe economy and outdoor recreation drives much of the tourism industry, but hunting has never been part of that equation.
Do Not allow to kill Bears, No way it should be allowed, Stop the Bear Hunt,
Hunting bears is killing for the sake of killing.It is disgusting and only shows that so-called “wildlife” officials don’t support “life” at all.
With all the regulations in the Tahoe Basin, I am completely confused as to why open trash bins are still allowed in a Raley’s parking lot. The center owner should be fined for the killing of that bear. It saddens me that we cannot invest in proper trash receptacles EVERYWHERE in the basin in order to protect our bears. I guess hunting them makes more sense to the few?
Patricia, bear hunters then take the bear meat and eat it. Bear is a perfect replacement for ground beef and is not shot full of antibiotics.
Miss frugal, great idea, and I do have a bear box for my garbage. But understand that the population of bears in Tahoe exceeds the carrying capacity of the wildland. So if everyone gets a bear box today bears either starve to death, die of disease or find food inside structures. Acccording to NDOW the population of bears is about twice what can be supported in the wild.
Isnt wild game organic???
In addition to local economic impacts, there budgetary issues inside of NDoW. In the last two budget cycles Carson City has effectively eliminated their Bear Aware program. This has been very successful in reducing human-bear interaction problems. But the bear hunt, with a real net cost likely to exceed $100,000, took all of that money plus some from other programs like wood duck monitoring and sage grouse habitat expansion. Just to benefit the 39 people who drew tags.
Here is the true issue…
Today there is a denser population of bears in the Tahoe Basin than there has ever been documented in years past. It is estimated that there is enough natural resources (food and space) to support a bear population that is approximately 40% the size of the current population in the Tahoe Basin, but due to open trash containers, and people that actually feed the bears, the Basin harbors far more bears than it should naturally. These bears only become a problem when we eliminate the easy access to food sources by installing bear proof trash cans, etc.. Once these sources of food are eliminated the bears have to go somewhere else to find food, and too often it forces bears to break into seasonal cabins and occupied homes in search of food……
How to manage the overall issue…
As more and more people become bear-aware and install bear proof trash cans the chances of dwelling break-in will likely increase. The logical plan of action would be to eliminate or remove/relocate bears to other areas to reduce the potential threat of break-ins and public endangerment, but when we do relocate problem bears they to often come back to the original area of capture and continue to be an issue. That’s is why the State has began to look at bear removal through hunting as a mode/method of approach to solve the problem, and to be honest it does appear to be highly logical for multiple reasons. The removal of bears through hunting will alleviate costs to the state for managing problem bears. The are individuals that would enjoy hunting bears, and through application and tag drawing fees that they pay to hunt the bears the state collects some revenue to manage the bear hunt program. The only issue is that a harvest/removal of 20 bears of 400-500 bears in the state is just a drop in the bucket, and the results from this years hunt will be miniscule. Problem-bears will continue to be an issue until the non-natural food sources are eliminated from the Basin (bear proof trash cans, repercussions enforced on those that feed bears) and the population is reduced to a number that can be naturally supported in the basin.
Only then will the overall issue be resolved…..
So Mr. Biologist, How does killing off bears who stay in the wild and are not feeding from trash cans or breaking into homes help clear up the problem? If you want to get rid of problem bears, then the hunt should be for only those bears that get in trash cans. The hunt is destroying the “good” gene pool. No one has killed a problem bear yet, only “WILD” ones!
Maybe it would a fair fight if instead of the “Right to bear arms” there was a “Right to arm bears”.