Owning a home in Southern California isn’t just a dream for the locals. Apparently, the bears want in on the market, too.
Just ask residents and city officials in the Sierra Madres, who in recent years have watched their furry, four-legged neighbors tear through the woods and into their cars, kitchens and living rooms, as if humans were keeping the place warm for them.
“This is a new phenomenon,” Sierra Madre City Attorney Alex Giragosyan said. “In the last two years, something interesting has happened. And just like Jurassic Park, the bears have learned to open doors. I don’t know how they learned it. I don’t know how they teach each other, but they also open car doors.”
Bear sightings are nothing new to the Sierra Madre and other communities in the foothills of the Angeles National Forest, but in recent years bears have become bolder in their search for food.
Officials said there were about 100 reports of bear sightings in the Sierra Madre in 2020, but no reports of bears breaking into homes. Last year, those numbers reached 380 visits and 50 breaks.
“Over the last five years, they have really become a nuisance.” Owner Sarah Alden told CBS2 about a rock bear that broke into his family home and trashed it. “They are being shameless, they really are.”
Erin Wilson, regional manager for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s South Coast region, said the behavior is a result of people moving deeper into the wild lands where the bears live. She told the Sierra Madre City Council in May that while some bears are “harmless, not dirty” and just wander through neighborhoods and can be easily spooked, others are habituated and adapt to human routines, such as trash cans being turned over on certain days to find food, and others are destructive bears that are fearless and can kill livestock, damage property and threaten public safety.
Wilson said the Sierra Madre does not have a harmful mix of grizzly bears and habituated bears.
But there was a bear who was a very bad neighbor for a long time.
Not long ago, he found an empty house tucked away among the narrow, tree-lined streets of Alta Vista, enjoying beautiful views of the San Gabriel Valley, and moved in. As a BMW sits in the driveway, dust and overgrown bushes obscuring the felled trees littering the yard, the bear apparently made himself at home.
Neighbors complained about the destruction and the terrible smell coming from the home. Since 2019, city officials have served the landlord multiple trespassing notices, including the tenant’s bear, to no avail. Multiple attempts by The Times to reach the homeowner were unsuccessful.
Last month, a resident wrote to city officials: “We had to call the police this morning because a bear broke through our fence” and entered a neighbor’s house, which was marked with a red sign. “We also observed a bear climbing up and out of the window of a shed on the property and we believe that is where it lives.”
The bear needed a different kind of joke than the others.
With laws prohibiting government officials from entering homes without a warrant, the city had no choice but to document home violations. So last month they got creative.
The city filed a petition for review and abatement, which was signed by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. The petition includes complaints from neighbors and several photographs of the property in its petition, including an image of a bear leaning against a wooden fence.
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 window “consistent with signs of a black bear,” Fish and Wildlife Lt. Jonathan Garcia wrote. There were signs the bear had lived there, including scat, rotting food, packages and containers.
The smell from the shed and house “emanated odors associated with organic matter that attract skunks and black bears,” Garcia wrote.
Giragosyan, the city attorney, said the house has been boarded up ever since. Sierra Madre bills the owner for work done on the property, including tree trimming and cleanup.
Wildlife officials are asking the public not to feed wildlife and to remove ripe fruits and vegetables from the ground. Residents can also install motion-sensing lights around their property and secure access spaces to avoid an open invitation to wildlife.
According to Fish and Wildlife, one or fewer black bears are killed each year in the United States, out of a total of more than 900,000 bears nationwide.
But in response to numerous bear encounters in the surrounding foothill communities, residents have since created their own bear watch groups to respond to the growing problem.
“Residents are a little torn because there are a lot of people in the Sierra Madre who love wildlife and want to protect the bears,” Giragosian said. “There are also residents who fear for their lives.”
The bear, which lived on Alta Vista Drive, has not been seen since.
