Bears learned to open doors in California town

Owning a home in Southern California is not just a human dream. Apparently, Kuma also wants to enter the market.

Just ask Sierra Madre residents and city officials. Over the past few years, we’ve been witnessing our furry four-legged neighbors come out of the woods and invade cars, kitchens, and living rooms as if humans were just warming up the place. Masu. for them.

“This is a new phenomenon,” said Sierra Madre City Attorney Alex Guiragossian. “Something interesting has happened in the last two years, and like in Jurassic Park, the bears learned how to open doors. We don’t know how they learned. How they interacted with each other. I don’t know if they’re teaching each other, but they’re also opening car doors. ”

Bear sightings are not new to the Sierra Madre and other communities in the foothills of the Angeles National Forest, but in recent years bears have become more bold in their search for food.

In 2020, there were about 100 bear sightings in the Sierra Madre, but there were no reports of home invasions, authorities said. Last year, that number jumped to 380 sightings and 50 break-ins.

“It’s only in the last five years that they’ve really become a nuisance,” homeowner Sarah Alden told CBS2 about a deformed rabbit that recently broke into her family’s home and destroyed it. spoke. “They’re getting more brazen, they really are.”

Erin Wilson, regional manager for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s South Coast region, said this behavior is the result of humans moving deeper into the bear’s wilderness.

He told the Sierra Madre City Council in May that some bears are “no harm, no dirt” and can be easily frightened by simply wandering into a neighborhood, and that some bears are habituated and adapt to human habits, such as the days of the week when they put out their trash cans. He said there were also bears. Other bears can fearlessly kill livestock, damage property, and threaten public safety.

The Sierra Madre has a mix of harmless bears, dirty bears and domestic bears, Wilson said.

But there was one bear who had been a particularly bad neighbor lately.

They recently discovered and moved into a vacant house tucked away on a narrow, tree-lined road on scenic Alta Vista Drive overlooking the San Gabriel Valley. As the BMW sat in the driveway collecting dust, littering the yard while the overgrown shrubs hid the felled trees, the bear had apparently taken up residence.

Neighbors began complaining about trespassing and a terrible odor emanating from the house. Since 2019, city officials have served the homeowner with multiple violation notices, including one regarding the tenant’s bear, to no avail. The Times made multiple attempts to contact the homeowner without success.

“This morning we had to call police after a bear broke down our fence and entered a neighboring home that was red tagged,” residents wrote in a letter to city code enforcement officials last month. said. “We have also observed a bear going in and out of a cabin window on the property and believe it may be living there.”

Bears needed a different type of hazing than other bears.

Because the law prohibits government agents from entering homes without a warrant, the city had little choice but to post the violation papers. So last month, they got creative.

The city applied for an inspection and abatement warrant, which was signed by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. In addition to complaints from neighbors, the application included several photos of the property, including one of a bear leaning against the house’s wooden railing.

On Aug. 15, California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials arrived at the home and found bear tracks, a broken window, and scratch marks on the windowsill that were “consistent with black bear tracks,” said Jonathan.・Lieutenant Garcia wrote: There were signs of bear habitation, including feces, rotting food, wrapping paper, and containers.

Odors coming from the outdoor shed and home “emitted odors associated with organic matter that attract pests and black bears,” Garcia wrote.

City Attorney Giragossian said the home was then boarded up. The City of Sierra Madre charges homeowners for work done on their property, such as cutting down trees and cleaning.

Wildlife officials are asking people to remove ripe vegetables and fruits from the ground to avoid feeding them to wild animals. Residents can also install motion-sensing lights around their properties and provide crawl space to avoid wildlife.

According to Fish and Wildlife, fewer than one person is killed by black bears in the United States each year, and there are more than 900,000 black bears in the United States.

But after encountering large numbers of bears in surrounding foothill communities, residents started their own bear watch group to deal with the growing problem.

“The residents are torn apart in a way because there are a lot of people in Sierra Madre who love wildlife and want to protect bears,” Guiragossian said. “Some residents feel their lives are in danger.”

The bear, which lived on Alta Vista Drive, has not been seen since.

The Los Angeles Times in 2024. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.