A Point Reyes Station man spotted a bear last week while driving near the Nicasio Reservoir in the predawn darkness. Footage from Joshua Jones’s dash cam captured before 5 a.m. last Wednesday shows a cinnamon-colored bear on Point Reyes-Petaluma Road. It stops to size up the vehicle before lumbering along in the glow of the headlights. Mr. Jones posted the video to Nextdoor to alert local farmers: The bear was about a half-mile from Alpacas of Marin.
Mr. Jones, a construction project manager, was driving to work in San Francisco when he saw the bear on the side of the road, he said. He followed behind it slowly until it jumped over the guardrail and out of sight. “I was impressed by how healthy it looked,” said Mr. Jones, who assumed food might be scarce in the area.
The Marin County Sheriff’s Office has received no reports about the bear, a spokesman said.
The black bear is the only bear species that has inhabited the state since the California grizzly bear was hunted to extinction in the early 20th century. Black bears, some of which are actually brown, are common in mountainous areas throughout the state, including the northern coastal ranges as far south as Sonoma County. Black bears largely vanished from the Point Reyes area by 1901, and for more than a century, bear sightings have been few and far between in Marin. Last May, an adolescent male black bear made its way into San Anselmo, climbing a backyard tree and alarming neighbors before escaping to the Mount Tamalpais area. The following month, bear sightings were reported on the Coast and Sky Trails in the Point Reyes National Seashore, and near the Olema Cemetery. Neighbors in Seahaven suspected a bear had clawed and overturned their garbage bins.
In 2010, visitors and locals reported bear sightings at several Tomales Bay beaches and at Divide Meadow. A young male bear also explored parts of the seashore and the Mount Tamalpais watershed in 2003.
Most isolated bear sightings have been young male bears striking out on their own to find new territory, said Ken Paglia, a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
“If it’s a no-harm, no-foul bear, our first goal is to give it the chance to find suitable habitat on its own, but the moment there’s a public safety component, we respond,” Mr. Paglia said. “Bears mostly forage, so they’re looking for easy access to things like garbage, pet food or fruit from fruit trees. We want to give the bear a shot to find suitable habitat on its own.”