Sonoma Valley bear encounters prompt reminders from officials: Secure attractants around your property

A black bear - and perhaps more than one - has been making the rounds along a broad swath of Sonoma Valley between Sonoma and Glen Ellen, getting awfully close to homes, including approaching windows and scavenging garbage on at least one couple’s porch.

Wildlife experts suspect it’s a young bear and say it’s the time of year that 1- and 2-year-olds leaving their mother’s care for the first time are most visible, as they follow their acute sense of smell in search of food, sometimes stumbling beyond the wilds where they were born and raised.

It’s also the most important time for people who live on the edge of or amid wildlands to contain their trash and to otherwise safeguard potential bear attractants like bee hives, compost, bird seed, pet food, fruit trees and grape vines.

“We do not want to feed this bear,” said wildlife ecologist, tracker and consultant Meghan Walla-Murphy.

It’s all about keeping the bears wild, preventing them from becoming habituated to human environs and ensuring they don’t end up getting killed.

“Once a bear becomes aware that humans are associated with food, then bears can get into trouble that way,” said Stacy Martinelli, a wildlife biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

In one particularly close encounter, a Norrbom Road couple recorded a bear from mere feet away, through the front door windows, as it snuffled through bags of garbage staged for removal, periodically turning its head to peer through the glass.

“It was just inches from my phone,” said Anastasia Emmons, whose husband at first thought “a very large dog” had wandered onto the front porch that sunny Saturday, May 16.

Then they realized it was a black bear, possibly drawn by a fish wrapper, and eventually the smell of breakfast through an open window that prompted it to rise onto two legs.

The bear found a mousetrap with a small lump of cheese in it before Emmons’s husband banged a pan to drive it away.

But when Emmons left for 20 minutes to drive the trash to a dumpster up the road, the bear was there, she said.

Sugarloaf Ridge State Park Manager John Roney, an active member of the nonprofit North Bay Bear Collaborative created last year to educate and encourage residents to learn to get along with growing numbers of ursine neighbors, is among those collecting reports of bear sightings that appear to have begun on May 15 around Cavedale Road, above Glen Ellen and the Springs area.

Over the next week, what was possibly the same bear was seen at least seven times in rural areas of Cavedale, Norrbom, Moon Mountain and Nicolini roads, Roney and Sonoma County sheriff’s spokeswoman Misti Wood said.

Martinelli said the resident of a cabin off Cavedale Road was visited three times over four nights, until he “started up a chain saw and scared the bear away.”

“We told him to clean up his garbage and secure his dog food,” she said.

More sightings were reported on Cavedale Road on May 22, then at Jack London State Historic Park on May 23 and off Grove Street near Sonoma twice on Sunday, Roney said.

Hopefully, it’s a young bear still seeking out its own space, rather than an adult with bad habits looking for new territory, he said.

“If it’s just learning, then we can try and disabuse it of humans,” Roney said. “If it’s a bear moving in that’s already used to eating garbage and stuff, then that’s harder.”

Walla-Murphy said residents who live anywhere near bear territory should ensure that trash doesn’t accumulate around their properties and should put out their garbage on collection day as late as possible, and never overnight if they can help it.

Electric fences around bee hives, fruit trees, compost, even vegetable gardens are a good idea, too, Martinelli said.

And if a bear does come close, residents should start shouting, bang pots or use horns or other devices to scare the animal away.

“Bears are just by nature really, really curious creatures,” Walla-Murphy said, “but they’re also inherently fearful and scared.”

Staff Writer Lori Carter contributed to this report. You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com.