Point Reyes Light - May 29, 2003

First bear in a century seen on Point Reyes

By Victoria Schlesinger

Two men who operate the hostel off Limantour Road in the Point Reyes National Seashore on Sunday spotted the first bear seen on Point Reyes in more than a century.

Assistant manager Greg King, 40, told The Light he was awakened around 4:30 a.m. by noise around a compost bin. He said he went outside with a flashlight to chase off what he assumed would be raccoons and instead was "stunned" to find a medium-sized bear about 12 feet away rummaging through the bin.

King summoned hostel manager Bob Baez, 52, and the two watched the bear pull trash from a Dumpster adjacent to the compost bin. "The lid was flipped open, and he was up by those trees munching trash," Baez said, gesturing toward pines about 10 feet away.

The two men watched for about five minutes before the bear ambled off into the nearby brush.

The Park Service believes this is the first black bear (Ursus americanus) sighting in the area since the late 1800s. "We are 98 per cent sure this is a black bear, but we want more evidence," John Dell’Osso, the park’s chief of interpretation, told The Light.

UC Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management is now analyzing hair samples left on the Dumpster to confirm the creature was indeed a black bear.

At one time, Point Reyes was bear country. Just two miles from the hostel, Olema’s Bear Valley received its name in the 1800s because of its abundance of bears. "One man witnessed the trapping of eight grizzlies at one time," notes Place Names of Marin in explaining why Bear Valley was so named.

"These, and hundreds more, were trapped, treed, hunted and shot by local ranchers and visiting hunters."

In Marin County, grizzly, black, and brown bears were hunted and trapped into extinction by 1869. Statewide, the last grizzly bear was spotted in 1924.

Grizzlies v. black bears

However, with competition from the more-aggressive grizzlies gone, the number of black bears has grown steadily since then, the state Department of Fish and Game said this week.

Since 1980, the number of black bears in California has risen from an estimated 10,000 to approximately 30,000.

While no bears have been seen in West Marin for 134 years, in recent years a growing number of black bears has been seen in Occidental 40 miles to the north.

This is the mating season for bears, and rangers believe the black bear that showed up here Sunday may well be a young male that was forced to seek new territory after having been driven from his haunts by an older male. With the mating season underway, larger and older male bears may have driven away the younger bear.

Bear showed up on its own

"The park wasn’t actively seeking to reintroduce bears," park spokesman Dell’Osso said. "We’re very excited, but we don’t know if the bear will stay."

The park plans to set light-sensitive cameras along wildlife trails and hopes to get a photo of the bear if it trips one of the camera’s laser-beam trigger.

"This may be a fluke," said Natalie Gate, wildlife biologist for the National Seashore. "There’s a fair chance we’ll never see it again."

Although the coastal scrub brush surrounding the hostel is rich in food, black bears typically reside in forests, she explained. "Their preferred fare includes berries, nuts, grubs, small rodents, and possibly calves or lambs."

Dell’Osso said the bear should not cause the public to fear for its safety, "but we will continue to educate our backcountry campers to keep sites clean of food debris."

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