PINE MOUNTAIN CLUB, CALIF. — It's one of the oldest truisms in the forest: Please don't feed the bears. But in many communities across California, that's exactly what's happening, sometimes with deadly consequences for the bears.
In the secluded Kern County enclave of Pine Mountain Club, Susie Kramer used to toss table scraps off the deck. For years, deer, raccoons, foxes and a coyote she nicknamed Wiley feasted on the garbage buffet.
"I thought I was doing the right thing," said Kramer, who moved to Pine Mountain Club with her husband, Brad, from Santa Clarita eight years ago.
Then the bears showed up. And they wouldn't go away.
Kramer no longer chucks her trash. But some people here, knowingly or unwittingly, have been feeding the bears.
This year the mountain community has experienced a surge of "break-ins" -- black bears barging into houses or going through open doors. Up in the Lake Tahoe area, the Bear League, a nonprofit group dedicated to protecting bears, reports that it gets between five and 20 calls a day about bears entering homes.
Experts say the increased activity has partly been caused by wildfires that have ravaged bear habitat. But also to blame are humans, who have helped raise generations of trash-addicted bears. In response, wildlife advocates are stepping up efforts to educate people about how to coexist with bears.
"They're going from Mama's milk to Grandma's garbage," said Elizabeth Bolden, co-founder of http://http: www.pmcbearawareness.com/index.php "> www.pmcbearawareness.com/index.php , a group launched in Pine Mountain Club two years ago.
Bear anecdotes abound in this community of about 2,900 households roughly 70 miles north of Los Angeles, where the forest envelops homes built on large lots. According to Bolden, one resident left chunks of watermelon and cantaloupe on the side of a road.
But few folks are willing to admit what they are doing.
"The black bear situation up here was don't ask, don't tell, and the black bear was the big white elephant right in the middle of town," Bolden said.
For the Kramers, self-described animal lovers who rescue dogs as a hobby, the mother bear and two cubs that showed up in their yard were a novelty at first.
Once, a distraught cub clung to a tree, trapped by one of the Kramers' golden retrievers yapping below. Susie Kramer grabbed the cub -- experts say never do this -- and pushed it over the yard fence. She thought the traumatic experience would keep the bears away.
