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Letter: BEAR League board member says, ‘We are not making this up’

The BEAR League appreciates any time the local press sheds light on issues that hold back our Lake Tahoe Basin community from being a place where coexistence with wildlife in our urban/wild-land environment can be a reality.

In a recent Tahoe Daily Tribune article, the BEAR League was named multiple times and yet the BEAR League’s Executive Director, Ann Bryant, was not contacted for a statement.

As a BEAR League board member and volunteer, I want to take this opportunity to address two points made in the article.



As to the public safety issue, not one person has ever been killed by a wild black bear in California or Nevada. Furthermore, I want to add the BEAR League has never stated that black bears are nothing more than teddy bears.

The BEAR League and our trained responders know very well that black bears are capable of damage if trapped in close quarters with no escape. Our literature reinforces this.



As to Nevada Department of Wildlife’s comments about their relocation program, they are categorically untrue.

For the 10 years prior to 2010, (one year before the bear hunt started as the bear hunt started in 2011) only one bear was moved to this new hunt zone.

From Oct. 26, 2010 to Sept. 16, 2015 (the last date of information on trapping and relocating data we’ve received from public records requests), 27 bears have been relocated from the Tahoe Alpine environment to multiple popular bear hunts units.

We are not making this up. This is the data supplied by NDOW. Last year 50 percent of Tahoe trapped bears were relocated to a hunt zone unit.

As for the killing of bears that NDOW considers “nuisance bears,” why do they more often than not end up being yearlings?

Toogee Sielsch

South Lake Tahoe, Calif.


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