Bearing Down on Civilization : Increasingly Cramped by People, These Highly Adaptive Animals Are Expanding Their Territory

A century ago, even before settlers arrived with their rifles and saws, Southern California’s forests were barren of black bears.

The land belonged to grizzlies, the king of predators, so their smaller, less ferocious cousins from the north never ventured south. Then, in 1933, park rangers banished 27 rambunctious black bears from Yosemite National Park and exported them south, where they could roam free and stay out of trouble in the then-uncivilized San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains.

Today, the cinnamon-colored American black bear stands out as a rare wildlife success story in a state where, more than in any other place in the nation, hundreds of animals and plants hover on the brink of extinction.

An estimated 17,000 to 24,000 black bears--the largest population in decades--inhabit virtually every part of California, according to state wildlife biologists. The species is thriving everywhere it roves, including the local mountains, which are home to several hundred descendants of those Yosemite transplants.

Because their only natural enemy--the California grizzly--has been extinct since the 1920s, today’s population of black bears might exceed the number that roamed the state before settlers headed West. With California’s forests recovering from drought and hunters facing tougher regulations, bears are delivering larger, heartier litters and gaining a healthy layer of fat to easily survive the winters.

In some rural areas, these solitary, territorial animals are so numerous they are squeezed together at a density of two per square mile.

“You couldn’t cram many more in,” said Larry Sitton, a senior biologist at the California Department of Fish and Game who conducted a statewide bear survey a decade ago. “Right now, the bears are just about filling all the space there is for them.”

Increasingly cramped, these highly adaptive and versatile animals are expanding their territory, occasionally popping up in the oddest places--avocado groves in Ojai, onion fields near Bakersfield, even the Mojave Desert and the Laguna Mountains of San Diego.

“The black bear is one of the best examples of a large mammal that is still doing well in the face of impacts from civilization,” said Glenn Stewart, a Cal Poly Pomona zoology professor who tracked Southern California bears from 1970 through 1990. “Coyotes are the other outstanding example of a medium to large-sized animal that is competing well with humans.”

But as more bears share the wilderness with more people, the inevitable result is more conflict.

Nuisance complaints and property damage have multiplied, and in two rare, unprovoked attacks this month, a young, 200-pound bear mauled two boys and injured several other campers as they slept at youth camps at Barton Flats in the San Bernardino Mountains. On Friday, a black bear was spotted on a golf course in Lake Elizabeth, west of Palmdale, before being chased back into the Angeles National Forest by men in golf carts and sheriff’s deputies.

Normally docile and easily frightened, the animals are becoming fearless in competing for food and territory.

“We’re at carrying capacity for bears, so they are roaming around trying to find a place to exist,” Stewart said. “Young bears that are dispersing from their mothers and trying to find homes of their own sometimes wind up in bad places--bad in terms of their own survival and coming in contact with people.”

This year, 93 Californians, including five in the Southland, have been granted permits to kill bears that were damaging their homes, crops or livestock, according to the Department of Fish and Game. That is nearly twice the amount at this time last year. Wildlife officials grant permission to track and kill a bear when it causes repeated damage or threatens public safety; in three-quarters of the cases, the bear is never found.

Conflicts usually peak from July through October, when bears are prone to eat just about anything and more people camp in the mountains. Every summer, bears must gain an extra 100 pounds of fat to survive their winter hibernation.

“In summer, they are consuming something like 20,000 calories a day, so they have to eat a lot,” Stewart said. “With more people in the forest, more garbage, more people camping out, there’s probably going to be more conflict.”

Still, the chances of being attacked by a bear while camping or hiking are far lower than being struck by lightning, said Bob Stafford, the state’s bear project coordinator. Only a few cases of unprovoked attacks have been recorded in California history, including the mauling of a man at Shasta Lake last year and the recent attacks in the San Bernardino National Forest.

Encounters such as these “come in spurts,” said Leroy Lee, a longtime houndsman in San Bernardino who tracks problem bears. “At one time, it’s mountain lions and then you go a long time with no problems. Now we are getting bear complaints.”

Lee said hikers and campers frequently spend weeks in the San Bernardino Mountains or Sierra Nevada without encountering bears, but whenever he takes his bloodhounds, he discovers that the forest “is crawling with them.”

In the late 1970s, bears probably reached record lows in California because of unrestrained hunting and poaching. A decade ago, the population numbered from 12,000 to 14,000, according to the state’s five-year state bear study, which tracked about 200 bears.

However, conditions now are just about perfect for bears.

With the state’s long drought shattered by two rainy springs, bears are finding a plentiful supply of berries and acorns, their favorite summertime cuisine. During the drought years, bears were noticeably thinner. Although the animals typically do not starve to death, a female with insufficient fat cannot reproduce for an entire year.

Now, with ample food, more females are giving birth, their litters often contain two cubs instead of one, and more of their young are surviving.

Bears also are thriving because their rugged homes are not prime for development.

Although numerous animals are in jeopardy of extinction because the lands they inhabit are being bulldozed, 46 million acres of pine and hardwood forests and shrub lands in California provide suitable bear habitat. More than half of that land is government-owned and afforded some protection, according to a 1988 report by the state Department of Forestry.

Also, unlike the threatened spotted owl, the black bear is not dependent on the thick, old-growth forests coveted for timber. Instead, they live in the fringes of a forest, where they forage on shrubs.

“Black bears prefer forests, in contrast to grizzlies, which liked the prairies and foothills that were easily developed,” Stewart said. “There are impacts to the forests from timber operations and overgrazing, so they are not entirely protected. But there is enough of that kind of habitat left in California that bears can do very well.”

Poaching, according to wildlife wardens, also is believed to have declined, allowing the bear population to surge. The state mounted a crackdown in the mid-1980s on poachers who kill bears to sell their parts or hunt out of season. Also, some areas in the state were made off limits to bear sporthunting.

Still, some animal rights groups, led by the Fund For Animals, are trying to provide more protection for bears. Advocating a ban on bear sporthunting similar to a ballot measure approved for mountain lions, they call the state’s population estimates questionable and assert that hunting is thinning out young male bears.

Wildlife experts say California’s bear population has almost peaked, and many more would strain the capacity of the forests. If the population grows much more, natural selection would take over--reproduction will slacken as food becomes harder to find, and males will kill each other in wars over territory.

To biologists, the expanding territory of bears is a welcome trend. Black bears and mountain lions top the food chain as the only large predators left in California, and they help keep nature in balance by preying on rodents and other mammals.

But to those who are in the path of the bears’ sojourns, it can be alarming. Bears in search of a few square miles to claim as their own are coming across suburbs, highways, campgrounds, ski resorts and logging camps, and, on these journeys, they realize that humans provide good supermarkets.

“They can get across freeways. They can swim real well. They can open doors. Nothing really stops them,” Stafford said. “They are incredibly smart and they have an ability to exploit any number of things as food--carrion and insects, avocados.”

Last month, a bear raided a refrigerator in a cabin in El Dorado County, stole a slab of bacon and carried it to an upstairs bedroom for breakfast in bed, leaving a trail of slobber marks and mud prints, Stafford said. In one recent month, bears broke into 62 cabins in Plumas County.

In the Sierra Nevada, bears sometimes bluff hikers, frightening them into running and dropping their food-laden backpacks. One bear routinely watches for mule trains crossing a precarious part of Siskiyou County’s Marble Mountains, apparently in hopes of nabbing a pack toppling down a ravine.

They swim across Pyramid Lake in Angeles National Forest to root through garbage cans on tiny Chumash Island. Some cross rural highways in Ventura County to pick avocados in groves, and farther north, one recently caused a car wreck on Interstate 5 in Shasta.

Kevin-Barry Brennan, a state wildlife biologist in Hemet, said bears have been sporadically reported in the San Jacinto Mountains for several years, but tracks were not confirmed until this spring. The bears, he said, probably traversed the San Gorgonio Pass and ambled across Interstate 10 at night, which means they now range farther south in California than ever before. In the past, their southernmost border was the Banning-Beaumont area.

Over the past decades, a few black bears have also been reported in Orange County’s brushy Santa Ana Mountains. All such reports are undocumented and highly suspect because numerous freeways cut off those mountains from bears.

In one mysterious incident, a bear was recently killed by a car near Lake Henshaw in San Diego County. Since negotiating the obstacles on its own would have been virtually impossible, wildlife experts can only speculate that a hunter might have abandoned the animal nearby, perhaps trying to introduce the species in the area.

“Every now and then a bear will show up . . . where they were never seen before,” Sitton said. But, he added, “that bear would have to be really talented to survive the journey from the San Bernardino Mountains to the San Jacintos to Cleveland National Forest down to Lake Henshaw in San Diego County.”

Where Black Bears Roam

California now has more black bears than in decades, perhaps even longer. An estimated 17,000 to 24,000 inhabit the state’s forests, and they are expanding into previously unoccupied areas.

* About half are packed in California’s northwestern corner at about two per square mile.

* Roughly 6,500 bears inhabit the Sierra Nevada.

* The San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountains have an estimated 200 to 400 bears.

* Bears are seen sporadically in San Diego County and the San Joaquin Valley.

* Bears have crossed Interstate 10 and reached the San Jacinto Mountains.

Bear Habitat, by County

California has about 46 million acres of forested land that are suitable for black bears. Counties with the most habitat, in millions of acres: Mendocino: 2.19 Shasta: 1.56 Humboldt: 1.55 Trinity: 1.47 Siskiyou: 1.31 Fresno: 1.31 Plumas: 1.18 Monterey: 1.08 Tehama: 1.01 Tuolumne: 0.88 The American Black Bear

Size: 4.5 to 6 feet long and 2 to 3 feet high at the shoulders.

Weight: 200 to 400 pounds for adults.

Coloring: Black to cinnamon brown, usually with a patch of white on chest. Face is always brown.

Range: In California, pine and hardwood forests and chaparral.

Food: Fruits, berries, acorns, grasses, roots, small mammals like rodents, carrion, insects and even garbage.

Habits: Solitary and territorial, with a shuffling walk and a stride about a foot long. Adult males occupy areas of about 20 square miles and often kill off young males that encroach on their territory. Females mate in mid-July every other year and give birth to one or two cubs at a time. If forage conditions are poor, the bears cannot reproduce for a year.

Hibernation: Hibernates from mid-winter to early spring.

Source: California Department of Fish and Game, Final Environmental Document Regarding Bear Hunting, April, 1993; Fish and Game biologists; “Harper & Row’s Complete Field Guide to North American Wildlife, Western Edition”; “Western Forests” by Stephen Whitney.