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BE BEAR AWARE :bear:
A home in Kings Beach, a community on the north shore of Lake Tahoe, had been “torn apart” by the roaming family of bears.
After forcing their way into the home by peeling off a section of the basement, the bears broke a gas line. A neighbor called 911 after smelling the odor.
The owners of the residence were not home at the time, and the state's Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW) responded to remove the mother bear and its cubs.
Authorities warned that bear activity has increased around the Tahoe basin over the past few weeks due to warm weather. The homeowners' identities were not released, and the local sheriff's office did not release any specific information about the bears' sizes.
Fortunately, the homeowners were not home when the mama bear and her three cubs peeled the siding off the home, and made the basement their temporary home. During their stay, the bears managed to break the gas line, prompting a neighbor to call 911 after they smelled an odor.
The Department of Fish and Wildlife also responded to help safely remove the mama bear and her cubs.Bear activity around the Tahoe basin has increased due to warmer weather over the past few weeks.
This is a friendly reminder to keep your homes, windows, sliding doors, and cars locked at all times, and to make sure no remnants of food or food wrappers are left in areas accessible by bears.
Additionally, please secure your garbage cans in bear-proof containers to keep bears out. Bears have an extraordinary sense of smell, and can detect food from about 20 miles away — their sense of smell is seven times better than a blood hound’s. Please be bear aware!
“If a bear breaks into your home, do not confront the bear. Most bears will quickly look for an escape route,”
“In the event of a black bear attack, it is usually recommended to fight back. However, each situation is different. Black bear attacks are rare in California and typically are defensive in nature because the bear is surprised or defending cubs; however, bears accustomed to people may become too bold and act aggressively,” it adds.Last October, the state fish and wildlife agency urged residents to practice proper food and garbage storage under the campaign slogan “Keep Tahoe Bears Wild.”
It said bears with access to human scraps or garbage will “continue to seek it out” and will be less cautious of people, getting bolder to access the food source.
“Bears that have become indifferent or habituated to the presence of people may cause property damage and threaten public safety. Residents and visitors can help keep bears wild and reduce potential conflicts between bears and humans by acting responsibly in bear country, properly storing food and garbage in bear resistant containers.”
Fall used to be the time when millions of monarch butterflies in North America would journey upwards of 2,000 miles to warmer winter habitat.
But these days the iconic butterfly's numbers are dwindling. The western migratory population is down 97% since the 1980s — a survey this month found fewer than 2,000 — and the eastern population has slipped 80% in just the past 15 years.
Because of these grim numbers the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ruled in December that monarchs deserved protection under the Endangered Species Act, but it would still be several years before the butterflies were listed as threatened or endangered.
It's time the species may not have.
Halting the precipitous decline of North American monarch populations hinges, in large part, on milkweed. It's the sole plant the caterpillars eat and where monarchs lay their eggs. It's also quickly disappearing with increasing urbanization and pesticide use.
Since monarchs can't survive without milkweed, conservation efforts have focused on planting more milkweed. But it's not as simple as it sounds.
“We've learned a good bit in the past two or three years about how to create these types of habitats, but there's not a whole lot of evidence guiding the way we create the plantings,” says Adam Dale, an assistant professor in entomology at the University of Florida. “For example, the diversity of plants in a garden, the specific plants that are used and their arrangement — all of those things matter for how the butterflies are able to locate the hosts and move from one to the next.”
Biological diversity in ecosystems is usually a good thing, but a large body of research has shown that more diverse habitat may not be good for species like monarchs that are so specialized in what they eat.
“There's a potential for actually reducing monarch success by increasing the diversity of plants,” in these conservation gardens, says Dale.
One reason is that a more varied garden can make it harder for the insects to find their host plants if they're obscured visually or chemically. A recent study from researchers at the University of Kentucky found that monarchs did better when milkweed was planted on the perimeter of gardens.
