It’s no secret that bears love to rummage through garbage cans, campsites and even kitchens in search of human food. But a wildlife expert suggests the rise in bear incidents could actually be due to a sugar addiction.
The community of Sierra Madre has seen this firsthand in recent weeks with bears break into some housesand even move into someone else’s crawl space.
According to Forest Galante, a biologist and Discovery Channel personality, their craving could be the reason so many more birds are being seen.
“Some bears become addicted to human substances,” Galante said. “Some of them are sugars, some of them are actually alcohol.”
According to him, an important factor is how well the bears can smell these substances.
“Bears have an incredible sense of smell, about 1,000 times better than the average dog, so they can smell sugar much better than we can,” he said.
That includes the Nesler family, who have been living under their home against their will for the past two weeks. They say he’s been a good tenant so far, but now it’s time for him to go.
“He was thrown out. That’s what my son says,” said Susan Nesler, who named the bear Junior.
They were told that Junior is likely older and that they would therefore prefer to close off the crawl space he considers home if he runs away, rather than use a tranquilizer or other means.
She says she thinks Junior is one of those bears who loves sweets.
“The biologist said his teeth were getting bad, which is probably from eating junk food,” Nesler said. “I know he had ketchup in his stool.”
Just last week, another house was broken into, with the bear leaves a huge mess behind in their kitchen, including his attempts to eat a huge block of honey. In Claremont, another foothill community, a family’s home was struck by a bear that entered while they were in the middle of baking cookies.
While the Nesler family plays the waiting game with Junior, the rest of the Sierra Madre community and Department of Fish & Wildlife officials do their best to make sure he doesn’t find another home to curl up in.
