How Dangerous are Tahoe’s Black Bears?
by Ann Bryant ( March 2004 ) Get ready everybody! The bears are starting to stir. Seems like they just crawled in for their nap, most of them anyway, and now here they come out again! I just heard the news that in Minnesota they actually sleep for six or seven months! I’m wondering how to convince our Tahoe bears to ‘chill out’ for longer than just from December into March. I’m also wondering how to convince people to refrain from putting garbage out all year long. Does anyone get the idea that the two could somehow be related? Before it gets too ‘wild’ it might be a good time to go over a little interesting bear history. Does everyone know we used to have grizzly bears all around Tahoe? That guy on the California state flag, he’s a grizzly. Don’t panic, though, we don’t have any left. We killed them all. There actually used to be more grizzly bears in California than there were black bears. They congregated in herds. Back in the 1700’s and early 1800’s the first white men who came to
