Lake Tahoe — with its luxurious trip properties dotted by alpine forests, its tens of 1000’s of vacationers, and its enormous focus of the species Ursus americanus — has lengthy been on the heart of California’s human-bear conflicts.
Bears stroll out of the woods and throughout crowded seashores to grab meals from coolers. They sneak into ice-cream shops, smash by automotive home windows and break into homes, trashing kitchens. Typically, they go viral on Instagram and TikTok within the course of.
They’ve turn into as a lot part of Lake Tahoe lore as lazy afternoons by the water or starlit evenings underneath mountain peaks. And so too have the fights about what to do about downside bears — with some activists accusing the California Division of Fish and Wildlife of being too fast to euthanize naughty bruins, as an alternative of training the general public to higher coexist with their ursine neighbors.
However even on this setting, the combat that has roared up in South Lake Tahoe this summer time is not like something many on either side of this subject have seen in years. For the previous couple of days, bear activists have been staging a round the clock bodyguard operation, together with sleeping out within the woods, to guard a cub and a home-raiding bear that the state has focused for “lethal removal.” The activists have additionally launched a public relations marketing campaign to attempt to foyer the federal government to spare the bear’s life.
The bear in query is a younger mom, with a cub by her aspect. She is thought to the federal government as “Sow #753,” whereas bear activists and their lots of of 1000’s of social media followers name her “Hope.” They name her cub “Bounce.” (The state of California doesn’t approve of naming bears as a result of authorities consider wild animals shouldn’t be anthropomorphized.)
No matter she is known as, Hope/Sow #753 has a protracted historical past with the California Division of Fish and Wildlife. She has been on the division’s radar since 2022, in keeping with wildlife officers. However this summer time, she took issues up a notch. She has been linked, by way of her DNA, to greater than a dozen residence break-ins within the South Lake Tahoe space since mid-July, state wildlife officers say.
On Aug. 21, she and her cub broke into a house on Butler Avenue in South Lake Tahoe and by chance lighted a burner on the gasoline range whereas rummaging by the kitchen.
“This bear and its cub came very close to igniting a fire and burning down a house, and potentially creating a forest fire,” stated Peter Tira, spokesperson for the Division of Fish and Wildlife.
A workers member at Fish and Wildlife who was within the space occurred to odor the gasoline and known as 911.
As emergency responders handled that state of affairs, mom and cub fled up a close-by tree.
The Fish and Wildlife workers member stood beneath to observe them.
The staffer was holding a paintball gun, which is usually used to haze bears. However when some locally noticed it, they feared that it was an actual gun, and that the bears had been liable to being shot.
The Bear League, a company that works to guard bears by educating individuals to coexist with them, blasted out an pressing message to its 200,000 Fb followers: “NEWSBREAK: Hope and Bounce are currently high up in a tree on the 2000 block of Butler Avenue in South Lake Tahoe, and Fish and Wildlife are there and we know they have issued a standing order to kill Hope. If you are in the area, please go act as a respectful witness.
People began rushing to the scene. Many of them were furious at Fish and Wildlife. “How would they like it if an ex-USMC sniper came to protect those bears?” one man wrote on the Bear League’s Fb web page.
Ultimately, the police had been known as to defuse the state of affairs.
Ever since, stated Ann Bryant, the manager director of the Bear League, groups of volunteers have tried to stay by the bear always, to guard her from being killed by Fish and Wildlife.
“We have some people who are sleeping out in the wilderness at night,” Bryant stated, including that they achieve this as a result of the bear’s “life has meaning, and she wants to live and she has a baby. We don’t want her to be murdered.”
Ann Bryant, govt director of the BEAR League, poses for a portrait in Homewood, Calif., on April 25, 2025.
(Max Whittaker / For The Occasions)
Bryant stated she would love the mom bear and her cub to be left alone, but when Fish and Wildlife received’t enable that, she needs the bear to be trapped and transported to a bear sanctuary out of state, whereas her cub could possibly be rehabilitated and launched again into the wild.
She famous that the Division of Fish and Wildlife has usually been reluctant to ship bears to out-of-state havens, however hopes that the lobbying that has been unleashed on the division “from people all over the world” who’re “extremely upset about her potential death” will assist sway officers.
Tira, of the Division of Fish and Wildlife, stated bears despatched to sanctuaries usually fail to thrive and “have to be on antidepressant medications.”
“Shipping California wildlife all over the place is not necessarily a long-term solution,” he stated.
But it surely was clear to officers, he stated, that one thing needed to be accomplished about this specific bear.
“It’s a dangerous situation,” he stated. “We know this bear has broken into at least a half a dozen [homes] just within the last week. This is not normal bear behavior.”
Nonetheless, he added: “Things in Lake Tahoe are very emotionally charged with this bear.”
Bryant and different bear activists have been maintaining a daily stream of updates on their efforts to maintain the bear from being killed. In addition they dispute the concept that Hope/Sow #753 is especially badly behaved.
“She has not done much more than walk in through unlocked doors and windows,” Bryant stated, including that after the bodyguard operation was launched, the bear is now being continuously watched and hazed away from properties when she tries to get in.
“She has never even bluff charged anybody. She’s absolutely 10 times better than some of the other mama bears down in that area,” Bryant stated, including that the true downside was that some householders within the neighborhood weren’t being accountable about their rubbish or closing and locking their doorways and home windows and “she is being scapegoated.”
Regardless of the brouhaha over Hope/Sow #753, officers stated there has not been an enormous uptick in bear battle this summer time in Lake Tahoe.
Since Could 1, officers stated, there have been 170 incidents of bear-related property harm reported to the state, together with 18 circumstances of “general nuisance” brought on by bears and two unspecified public security incidents.
In 2024, there have been a complete of 521 reviews of property harm. The full was 607 in 2023; the primary and solely identified occasion of an individual being killed by a bear was recorded in California that 12 months: a 71-year-old lady in Downieville who was partially eaten by an animal who broke into her residence.
Bears have additionally continued to attract social media consideration for his or her food-lusting foibles. On Aug. 17, 4 days earlier than the standoff on Butler Avenue, deputies from the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Workplace discovered a bear inside an ice-cream retailer in South Lake Tahoe and snapped a photograph. It went viral.
