California’s Lake Tahoe Basin is home to one of North America’s densest populations of black bears who live in both the backcountry and in local neighborhoods. While can be exciting for visitors to see big, beautiful animals like a black bear strolling around developed areas, allowing bears to live comfortably or even pass through neighborhoods is dangerous for both humans and bears alike and should be discouraged if possible.
One important way to keep bears away from humans is ensuring garbage is disposed of properly and keeping a super tidy vehicle as Tahoe’s bears are famous for breaking into cars to snack on human food. This includes obvious items like leftover food and groceries but there are other attractants we might overlook like spent wrappers, chewing gum, sunscreen and scented air fresheners.
To illustrate the point that bears break into vehicles in Tahoe, check out this big fella who rolled up to an SUV parked in a residential driveway in Stateline, Nevada and opened the rear door to get some lemonade that the owner had forgotten to bring inside.
If you live in Tahoe or are just as a tourist, its is super important to keep you vehicle clean, the windows up and doors locked. Learn more from Bear Wise below.
Bear Wise Guidelines To Avoiding Car Break-Ins:
Our vehicles are often full of food, or stuff that smells like food. Unfortunately, vehicle doors can close on their own, trapping the enterprising explorer inside. Bears don’t have thumbs, so vehicle doors are much harder for a bear to open from the inside.
Black bears are strong enough to peel down a window that’s open an inch or two and flexible enough that even large bears can crawl through an open window if they see or smell something interesting inside.
Research shows that leaving your window cracked open only drops the temperature inside your vehicle by a degree or two, but makes it much easier for a bear to pop out the window to get inside.
Bears are very smart and very strong, and many trapped bears have no problem clawing their way out of the average vehicle. But fur coats are better at keeping bears hot than cool. When temperatures soar, the interior of a car can get hot enough to kill a trapped bear in a matter of minutes.
Even if the bear does manage to get out, many wildlife management agencies have firm policies that dictate that bears that enter homes and/or vehicles must be destroyed.
TIP: Many insurance policies do not cover wildlife damage to vehicles or homes.
Clean Up, Roll Up, Lock Up
- Get everyone in the habit of cleaning out your vehicle when you get out of it. Don’t leave pet food, bird seed, snacks, trash, chewing gum, candy, scented air fresheners, sunscreen, lip balm, hand lotion or anything else with an odor inside, even for a few hours. Or sitting in the truck bed.
- Avoid scented air fresheners.
- Lock your doors and roll up and lock your windows, even if you’re just parked in your driveway or in front of your rental. This will also deter opportunistic humans up to no good.
- If you’re away from home and must leave a cooler, picnic basket or other goodies in your vehicle, close windows, lock up and store stuff out of sight. If you spend a lot of time outdoors in bear country, consider investing in a bear-resistant cooler (learn more).