A black bear was 'evicted' from a Sierra Madre home as city reports more incidents with bears
A black bear was recently “evicted” from an abandoned home in Sierra Madre, a Southern California city facing an uptick in black bear reports.
In early August, a neighboring resident filed a complaint about a “foul smell” coming from a property and that a black bear was “living at the property,” according to a court filing.
Sierra Madre City Attorney Aleks R. Giragosian, who used the word eviction lightheartedly, said this incident was a public nuisance abatement for a property that — among other concerns including overgrown vegetation that was a fire risk — had become the dwelling for a black bear.
A home and shed was located at the property, the latter which had frozen meat the bear had gotten into, Giragosian said. The home’s broken window had served as an entrance for the black bear to enter and “ransack the property for food,” according to the filing.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife have visited the property but did not locate the bear. An official with the department said odors from the property and shed were attracting "varmints and black bears" and found black bear feces inside the home, according to the court filing.
The home and shed have since been boarded up to prevent the bear from getting back inside, and biological hazards — such as the feces and decaying food — was cleaned, said Giragosian.
Tim Daly, an information officer with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the department intends to find the bear. He explained that the bear, if not more than one, had used the home for food.
“It's not living there, but it knows that if it goes there — and this is bear behavior in general — it's likely going to find something that is taking care of its hunger issues,” he said. “That's why bears come into our communities the way they do anyway. They've been there before, and they likely had success.”
How many black bears have been reported in Sierra Madre?
The Sierra Madre Police Department reported 98 calls for service regarding black bears in 2020. Last year, that number jumped to 374.
Giragosian said this was “not an isolated incident” and that there have been multiple reports of bears breaking into homes.
As of July 23, Sierra Madre police had a total of 203 calls for service regarding black bears. These numbers are based on a presentation from a city council meeting in July.
“We’re not necessarily aware that there’s been more bear activity in Sierra Madre in the fall of 2024 versus the fall of 2023,” Daly said, adding that he’s not saying there hasn’t been an increase in sightings. “It is a fairly active community, as the other communities along that corridor are.”
Daly said the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has a Wildlife Incident Reporting system they encourage people to use. The increase in reports they are seeing is because people are using the system more.
“Sightings depend on who saw them, and what did they do with the sightings? Did they call the police only? Did the police call us? Did they call us in addition to the police? It's not an exact science when it comes to sightings. Three people might see the same bear, and that might be three reports ... it can be kind of vague as to what a sighting is,” Daly said. “We know that there has been significant bear activity in Sierra Madre for some time. Whether it's more this year than last year, we don't know.”
As of August, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife reported 79 calls and online reports to the Wildlife Incident Reporting system regarding black bears in Sierra Madre. The number reflects reports made, not individual incidents, and therefore, there can be multiple calls for an incident.
In California, reports of conflicts between humans and black bears averaged 674 a year between 2017 and 2020. That’s according to the Black Bear Conservation Plan for California, which states that the majority of these conflicts involve black bears being attracted to food, garbage or livestock.
That number spiked to an average of 1,678 a year during 2021 and 2022. These numbers reflect reports made to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and not reports made to different agencies, Alex Heeren, a research scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, told the Desert Sun in an email in August about the figures.
Heeren said that of the numerous reasons responsible for the higher number was filling some staff vacancies, meaning more people could enter reports made by the public. The research scientist also acknowledged that the number could be underreporting the human and black bear conflicts.
How can I prevent an encounter with a black bear?
Giragosian described a few of Sierra Madre’s efforts in combatting the presence of black bears in their community, including adopting bear-resistant trash cans, amending the municipal code to make feeding wildlife a misdemeanor, creating a “wildlife watch” for people to report their sightings and more.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has a number of recommendations that people can take to prevent potential conflict. That includes:
Bring pets inside at night
Eliminate access to places where a bear may want to den, such as crawl spaces under decks
Install motion-activated lights, noise makers and alarms
Using bear-proof trash cans
Daly said that wildlife enters our communities when they are comfortable being there and that comfort is enabled when these animals know they’ll find food.
Daly added that some ways to avoid attracting wildlife include removing fallen fruit from plants found in the yard, pet food and bird feeders.
“Ninety-nine residents out of a hundred in Sierra Madre or Monrovia or Malibu might be doing all the right things, secure garbage cans, picking up fallen fruit, putting away pet food, etc.,” he said. “All it takes is one weak link to bring wildlife still into a town or a particular neighborhood, because that animal knows when it gets there, it's going to score something, and when they do, they're likely to come back. So, we can't urge enough that everybody play by the same rules, follow our guidelines on how to make your home and your property less appealing for wildlife.”
Paris Barraza is a trending reporter covering California news at The Desert Sun. Reach her at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @ParisBarraza.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Black bear is 'evicted' from an LA County home amid rise in reports