October 23, 2006—Getting caught during a campsite raid really had these two black bear cubs down in the dumps.

The male cubs seen here were recently found trapped inside a Dumpster at the Zephyr Cove campground in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. The garbage bin's bearproof lid—which had been left open—accidentally closed with the young animals still inside.

Campground managers were tipped off to the "Dumpster divers" when the bear's mother, with a third cub in tow, began guarding the site's bins.

"The cubs were bawling for their mother while in the Dumpster," Jon Beckmann, a researcher for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), said in an email to National Geographic News. "By the time we responded [to an alert from the campground] and drove to the campsite, the cubs were in there for about half an hour."

Although bears have been recorded in the Sierra Nevada mountains since the 1850s, Beckmann says, human-bear conflicts in the region began increasing dramatically around 1990.

"The catalyst for this was one of the worst droughts on record in this region that drove bears to start foraging on human garbage," he said. Now bears are habituated to human food, and more of the animals are being seen in urban areas (read "Black Bears Adapting to City Living, Study Says" [November 26, 2003]).

The result is that urban bears are 37 percent heavier on average than their wild relations, are more active at night, and are more likely to be struck by vehicles, Beckmann says.

"We are also seeing bears breaking into people's homes, sometimes even while people are still in the house," he said. "This is a public safety issue."

Research into the urban bear issue by WCS and the Nevada Division of Wildlife prompted officials in the Lake Tahoe Basin to institute mandatory measures, such as special Dumpster lids.

But "obviously when the lids are left open, the Dumpsters won't keep bears out," Beckmann said. The campground will be cited for the oversight and for having some Dumpsters on site that aren't bear resistant.

—Victoria Gilman

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