Viral video shows bears in Lake Tahoe
By Mike Luery, KCRA-TV
A cellphone video that has been seen more than 5 million times after KCRA 3 shared it on Facebook Tuesday. It shows a mother bear and her two cubs swimming at Pope Beach in Lake Tahoe, near Camp Richardson.
It’s not every day you see a family of bears playing in a public lake — unless you’re a biologist.
“At Lake Tahoe, we get bears down at the lake frequently,” said Jason Holley, a supervising wildlife biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
In the video, which was shot last week, the mama bear doesn’t seem to mind the paddleboarders and other people nearby.
That’s advertising for Lake Tahoe that can’t be bought.
A mother bear with two cubs in proximity to humans is a death sentence to the bears!
MOTHER bears are DANGEROUS
UNAFRAID does not mean friendly….
My thought as well. Now we have two generations of a family who firmly believe that humans are harmless and can be ignored. Not a good portent for their future – like when they decide to invite themselves to dinner.
Robin Smith, had this taken place on the Nevada side this common and simple bear family activity might possibly have ended in a death sentence imposed by Carl Lackey and the Nevada Department of Wildlife. But here on the California side, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife take a much more progressive approach to bear management here in the Lake Tahoe Basin. CDFW feels that bears belong in bear habitat, namely the Lake Tahoe Basin. CDFW also strongly relies on the BEAR League to help educate Basin visitors and residents alike, and CDFW allows the BEAR League to be an on call bear aversion resource that is also used by South Lake Tahoe Police Department and the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office.
As to the urban myth that a black bear mom with cubs is more dangerous than a lone black bear just isn’t a fact. Grizzly’s are a different story, but a lone male/female black bear is as just as apt to show anxiety via vocalizations and body posturing and even bluff charging as a female black bear with cubs. Six weeks ago I had to run a mom and two of her cubs up a tree 10 feet to my back while I placed a log in a construction dumpster behind a barbed wire fence that her third cub had gotten stuck in. Long story short, I was never in danger and the whole family was reunited. Having said that, I, nor the BEAR League, advocate that ANYONE not trained in bear aversion knowingly put themselves into a close proximity to a bear that creates a stressful situation for you or the bear. Black bears although having no desire to interact with humans, or any other species for hat matter, are NOT teddy bears!
And just to clarify, in the history of California, Nevada, and Oregon no human has EVER been killed by a wild black bear! And not one human has EVER had a physical encounter with a wild black bear in the history of the State of Nevada.
Too: The photo of the bears on a ‘family’ friendly resort beach with tv cameras and personal watercraft for children looks a lot like the Disney beach where an alligator recently dragged a two year old boy away from his father to his death.
How boring you say? Alligators and bears have one thing in common…they are WILD (unpredictable) and should NOT share beaches with people.
Disney came under fire for NOT posting…really?? everybody knows there are alligators in Florida. Well everybody knows there are bears in Lake Tahoe??
The following was copied from the article that appeared in its entirety on the KCRA 3 website:
“In this case, the Bear League sent an observer to the lake to make sure people didn’t get too close to the bears.” “When you meet a bear like that doing what they have a right to do, then you have to respect that,” Bear League Executive Director Ann Bryant said. “And just give them room. Give them space. Don’t crowd them. You can take their picture. Take them from a distance.”
Since bears and humans both enjoy a right to the lake having a Bear League observer present on scene was likely the best course in this situation. I don’t know who (if anyone) would have the authority to order all humans out of the lake in a circumstances like this. The problem of human encroachment into wildlife territory is rampant throughout the entire country (and likely most of the world). Humans have so over populated the earth that they’ve disrupted the entire balance of nature while trashing up the oceans all to the detriment of the planet.
Birth control. It’s a good thing.