Don’t Be Trashy During Bear Season

The North Coast is home to many types of flora & fauna, including black bears.

As far as we know, bears hibernate in this area of California, though the Department of Fish and Wildlife is actively doing a study to find out for sure. 

“In the beginning of summer, it’s when bears are waking up and they like to get into trouble,” says Kiana Hargreaves, Humboldt-Del Norte Unit Wildlife Biologist for California Fish & Wildlife, “that’s when they get into people’s garbage cans or chickens or different things like that.

The North Coast is chock-full of birds, small mammals, fish, and even insects and berries and those are all in a black bear’s diet.

Meaning – you’ll probably find them nearby.

“So you can go anywhere where there’s high areas of berries especially right now. That’s where bears are going to be,” says Hargreaves.  “They want to pack in all those nutrients, all those sugars. And so take a very nice hike through our woods, look for berry patches, things like that. But don’t feed the wildlife. It’s really bad for them. Human food is not meant for bears.”

Summertime is also tourist season, so campsites are filled– and so are the trash cans, in state parks and residential areas alike.

“Doing super simple things, like only putting your trash out on the day of trash collection,” says Hargreaves as a bear season safety tip, “Or if you don’t have that option to put either pine sol or ammonia, you can just drizzle that on top of your garbage can and that’ll reduce the smells and that will keep those berries in the forest and keep them from trying to get into conflict with people. And yeah, we don’t don’t want them to be knowing people have food.”

Smokey Bear’s 80th birthday is this Friday, August 9th.

Smokey is a symbol of wildfire safety, and the Humboldt Redwoods State Park is celebrating with a special ranger-led campfire program this Saturday at the Burlington campground next to the Visitors’ Center.  The event is free and all ages are welcome.