Bear-feeding woman attacked in Tahoe
A Kings Beach woman who is known for feeding bears was attacked by one earlier this month.
California Department of Fish and Wildlife and Placer County District Attorney’s Office officials are investigating the Aug. 5 incident.
“The victim reported getting hit from behind” and suffered bites to the rear of her left shoulder and scratches on a leg that required care at a hospital, Patrick Foy, with the CDFW told the Reno Gazette-Journal. “Our warden did find several areas with evidence to suggest somebody on that property was feeding a lot of wildlife.”
The woman, whose name has not been released, could face six months in jail and a $1,000 fine if charged and found guilty of feeding wildlife.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
And now they will want to kill the bear ? This idiot deserves all she gets, from the bear as well as the law !
The bear problem continues. Either intentionally feeding bears or people not securing their household trash, making it easy pickin’s for the bear.
Some folks will never learn.They keep repeating the same action and expecting different results. I guess they don’t mind picking up their trash every morning from the diveway and yard and putting it back in the same place the bear got into it he night before…and then they do it all over again.
A lady neighbor of mine wants to print up fliers about bears and trash and we’ll hand them out. Worth a try! If that dosen’t work we’ll call in the Bear League, final solution if all else fails? Clean Tahoe and Dept. of Wildlife.
OLS
Keep wildlife wild. Bears are the biggest threat to our nation. Bears attacking people, mum. Bears attacking goats, death penalty. Save the goats attack the wannabe zoologists.
If a neighbor continues to attract bears with trash, the Clean Tahoe program will respond immediately with a warning to the homeowner or landlord. Repeated violations I believe result in citation and mandate to install a bear box. Bears repeatedly attracted to a house will soon start looking for food at houses nearby.
If the woman was feeding bears because she “loves them” I wonder how she will feel when this bear is captured and killed.
A few years back, a woman near Ouray, Colorado who was a regular bear feeder was killed by them.
They are not teddy bears. She needs to be disciplined for felony stupid. I hope the bear can survive this, though her idiocy will probably cause its death now.
This bear was an angry gourmet and obviously couldn’t bare it anymore. He was suffering from the same old and wanted top shelf gluten free with a side of non-GMO.
Gotta agree with Dog. Thank you Justice for your informed and understandable comment. I get it, you were trying to be pithy, but you failed in your attempt.
So sad to hear this AGAIN when will people learn?????
Hmmm: Agreed, conservatives are typically humorless.
Idiot. Live in the mountains, understand and protect wildlife. That means being responsible and keeping wildlife wild.
Known for feeding bears? She should be cited.
When will people learn that “A fed bear, is a dead bear!”? It’s the truth and if we follow this story it will play out. Just wait. I’ve had 19 very close encounters with 12 different bears just this summer and I never once felt threatened, even when bluff charged 5 different times. Learning to live along side these amazing animals in harmony requires some, but not much effort on our part. The most important is DON’T FEED THEM! I’m very sorry this woman was hurt, but I refuse to blame our forest friends for bad habits WE are teaching them!
Hope she is punished to the fullest extent of the law. Maybe the bear league can do some extensive aversion techniques on this bear so it doesn’t end up dead from this woman’s stupidity
6 months in jail might cost tax payers around $25K-$50k.
After spending 16 1/2 days hiking the Tahoe Rim Trail I did not encounter any bears by being cavalier with how I stored my food. Only at Watson Lake did I observe a mother and two cubs coming for water. The drought is having disastrous effects on the entire Tahoe basin including the wildlife. Less water means less food at higher elevations for them to remain away from populated areas. The bears are just trying to survive. Giving them an easy, short-term fix to a long-term problem will only get them killed by not using their ability to adapt. The bears are smart and will adapt-we just need to keep them away from stupid humans.
Burn her at the stake! Destroy her and all of her relatives! Hang her at sunrise! Shoot her like a dog in the street!
We have all the information we need from this one hundred twenty five word article to judge someone like this?
You all should be very afraid of a jury of your “peers”.
Is this person able to comprehend her actions? Does she suffer from any medical or mental conditions?
Is she new to the area? Could it just be a case of someone that is just ignorant of how living among wildlife works?
Naw! Burn her! She must be a witch!
Some of my best friends are witches. THEY respect nature and DON’T feed the bears. Do you shoot dogs in the street?
Hmmm…
Sorry, the whole witches thing is a Monty Python reference. Shooting like a dog in the street is an old southern colloquialism. My point was only that people are so quick to pass judgement with so little information.
Should bears be fed by humans? Of course not! Should humans judge others with only a minimum of information? Same answer.
There is a lot of press on living with wildlife – proper trash storage, not feeding animals so they can stay independent, “fed bear is a dead bear”. Incline has especially been in the news a lot, so it is hard to believe this woman was not aware.
It appears that BIG FINES is the only way to get people’s attention and respect, especially when intentionally feeding bears. I hope the full story comes out so that we can all learn from it…and hopefully drive home the point: Keep wildlife wild. Be responsible with trash, and do not leave food outside or in your car.
Cosa, please stop turning everything into a political diatribe. This is about bears, not politics.
After being mauled by the bear i would think she has been punished enough and more than likely will not be feeding again. personally i would have rather have paid a fine or gone to jail rather than be mauled.
She’s the poster child for IDIOT! Maybe…just maybe now she might realize they are NOT Yogi and Boo-Boo. She got what she created by feeding them. She’s even dumber than Ann (nuisance) Bryant NAMING bears all while preaching they are wild and to be left alone.
This lady who was bitten needs to be cited without question.
Not sure the bear boxes are a good solution. It is true that bears cannot get into the bear box , however the smells of meat and other bear edibles placed in a box for up to a week will draw bears into the immediate area. You have to couple the box with proper and timely placement of food in them. I see second home owners and vac rentals persons placing trash in them and then hitting the road. We need more solutions.
The BEST solution is keeeping these types of food,wrapprers,bags,unwashed cans in your freezer till just before pickup. Require your guests to do the same.
Doc, I’ve read a number of your offerings recently, and I gotta say you seem to be a perfect example of the pot calling the kettle black when it comes to the ‘idiot’ comment. Not that I’m the hugest fan of Ann Bryant’s tactics-I don’t know her, in my 15 plus years in Tahoe I’ve spoken with her maybe twice I agree with her at least as much as I disagree with her…but perhaps people affix names to bears in order to identify them and pinpoint the problem or nuisance bears, not to ‘endear’ themselves to them or treat them like pets. We are only beginning to understand the subtle nuances of perception and preferences within the animal mind-ourselves included. Some of the higher order cetaceans and dolphins appear to have names for themselves that others use, and pass on hunting techniques that are specific to a given pod to their relatives. We call that ‘culture’. Koko named her kitten. Elephants recognize and emotionally react to their dead relatives, and to their image in a mirror, knowing it is them-self they are seeing. Chimpanzees and dogs can display compassion ACROSS SPECIES LINES. My point is this: the entire world is conscious and sentient(CJ Bitter and Kits excepted), using, as a friend of mine likes to say, their bodies and senses as tools to feed experiences to their mind and develop personalities. They perceive and interact with the world they are born into. It is, after all, their planet too. And, in my opinion, a damn magical one at that.
Perhaps those uncaring people that leave their trash out for the bears to get into and those that feed the bears, should be required to witness the trapping and killing of a bear when Dept. of Wildlife comes out to destroy them. Maybe the consequences of seeing this magnificent animal destroyed because of their selfishness might be a stronger deterrent then a note from Clean Tahoe. Until a punishment fits the crime people are just not going to get it. Years and years of the bear league and Clean Tahoe giving it their best, on and on it never changes. The only one paying the price is the bear.
since clean tahoe is a cali entity it would rarely apply, as i can not remeber the last time cali has destroyed a bear, seems to happen mostly in Nevada.
‘Cosa, please stop turning everything into a political diatribe.’
diatribe: an angry and usually long speech or piece of writing that strongly criticizes someone or something
‘Hmmm: Agreed, conservatives are typically humorless.’
Nothing about my comment fits the definition of diatribe. In the future if you want to address me, don’t use words that you can’t define.
HHmmm:
Bryant is a nuisance, plain and simple. Over the 25yrs I have lived here I have had ‘run-ins’ with her when I was called to deal with bear issues. She is a self proclaimed expert nothing more. She is not playing with a full deck. I get it that she’s overly interested in the bears and thinks she is their personal guardian angel, but she is a nuisance nonetheless.
We all love our bears up here. Just saying that maybe this new resident/tourist has A LOT to learn and doesn’t have a clue (or maybe doesn’t care) of the feeding bears issues here. I find it hard to believe she has not heard or read about not feeding our bears and the laws which prohibit that. She will recover from her injuries and that’s good. Perhaps… she will learn from this. She should be fined and required to put in a bear box.
Just because she was attacked by a direct result of her behavior doesn’t negate her breaking the law….especially one so sensitive up here.
Haddi, I can name one dog that you can remove, oh, I guess ill leave it to the imagination of the readers
Gee doc, the same could be said about most everyone on this thread. Myself included. People, in general, become passionate about things they love and therefore probably have more knowledge regarding their interests. Ms. Bryant may not be a professional bear biologist but through her years of interest and involvement she is more likely, than you, to have knowledge and experience most dont have. Just because you dont like her dosent mean anything at all except for maybe you are just an unlikable old grouch…
doc-Who in their right mind would ever call you to deal with bear issues?- Morons are the real nuisance.
Well said Doc!! She is off her rocker.
Tea, you don’t know me. Look in the mirror for your moron.
How could any sane person possibly defend such an idiot .. This is a perfect example of nature weeding out the stupid and weak!!
As far as judging this woman goes, she is more than a “known” bear feeder, she is a _notorious_ bear feeder and has been spoken to and warned by law enforcement and locals over the course of several years, each time promising not to do it again. There were _eight_ (!) bears discovered on or around her property after this attack.
No more warnings and speakings-to, please. Strict and immediate penalties are the only reasonable response to criminally dangerous behavior. When some poor child is mauled to death by one of “her” bears, do you think some nut like her will even feel bad? Nope. Her sort only feels bad when the problem bear (created by her) gets euthanized.
Too much Timothy-Treadwellitis going on. Time to lock up the loons instead of even thinking you can have a discussion with them.
Nina, yeah I’ve got a couple of neighbors who refuse to take care of their trash and make it so the animals can’t get into it.
Big bear here again last night with garbage strewn about everywhere.
Clean Tahoe will be called come monday! This has gone on for far too long with me being “the nice guy neighbor”. See ya! OLS