Sonoma County group aiming to ease conflicts between humans and bears debuts neighborhood meetings

The conspicuous interlopers spotted increasingly hanging around Sugarloaf Ridge State Park outside Santa Rosa have prompted park management to call a neighborhood meeting Sunday to air some issues and concerns.

They’re not everyday strangers. They are black bears. Wild ones. Parents and cubs, even.

The appearance of a family group - a mother and two cubs - at Sugarloaf three years ago was seen as a sign that black bears were no longer occasional visitors to the area: They had taken up residence.

So began a movement among wildlife experts and public land managers, resulting in the recent formation of the North Bay Bear Collaborative, a nonprofit group dedicated to easing the area’s resurgence as bear habitat.

With more black bears turning up around the wild edges of the North Coast, the collaborative aims to reduce trouble for the bruins and people who occupy or visit many of the same areas.

Their hope is the bears can stay wild, seek out natural food sources and, with the help of people, avoid becoming habituated to humans or their food, Sugarloaf park manager John Roney said.

That means training people about how to reduce attractants like open garbage cans, unprotected bee hives and bird feeders, orchards, compost bins and vineyards that can lead the animals into close proximity with humans and development.

Sunday is the first of what are to be many community meetings targeting neighborhoods where interaction with bears is likely. The gathering will cover basic information about bear biology and history in California and the steps that people can take to deter unwanted interactions, said Meghan Walla-?Murphy, a wildlife ecologist, tracker and independent consultant who is leading the collaborative.

“People are excited and curious,” Walla-Murphy said. “The bears are so interesting. People love them, and they’re curious about them, but there’s enough fear that there’s a little of the titillation, and there’s the mystery and the curiosity.”

About 50 neighbors of Sugarloaf in the Adobe Canyon Road area and Kenwood have been invited to Sunday’s meeting at the Robert Ferguson Observatory, Roney said.

Space is limited, so those planning to attend are asked to register in advance at brownpapertickets.com/event/4463350.

A future meeting will be scheduled for neighbors in the Los Alamos/?Pythian Road areas, Roney said.

Future community sessions also are planned in Bennett Valley and elsewhere as part of the collaborative’s ongoing public outreach.

The group also recently secured funding to do DNA analysis, through UC Davis, on more than 100 samples of bear scat to help begin determining how many bears are in the region and what their relationship might be, Walla-Murphy said.

Sunday’s meeting runs from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Robert Ferguson Observatory in Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, 2605 Adobe Canyon Road.

The group’s website is beingwithbears.org.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com.