Bears in Lake Tahoe have been trying to dig under homes and rip away their foundations. Experts say rat poison is to blame.
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Image
- Several homeowners living in Lake Tahoe, California, complained about bears last month.
- The bears have been digging away at the foundations of their home, they said.
- Experts said that bears are attracted to rat poison, which homeowners have placed under their decks.
Black bears in Lake Tahoe, California, have been trying to dig under homes and rip away their foundations, according to multiple reports.
The nonprofit organization BEAR League said in a Facebook post last week that it had received nine calls from homeowners in the area in the last three days of June. The bears, they said, were "digging and ripping to get under their home."
But all of the homeowners had one thing in common: they all had mouse bait placed under their homes, the post said.
"To a bear, this poison smells like candy, just as it does to mice ... All of these animals will come from miles away and you can never kill as many as you invite," the post warned.
BEAR League Director Ann Bryant told SFGATE that the issue mainly comes from vacation homeowners or apartment managers in the area and that the main way to avoid attracting them is to remove all the rat poison.
"We tell them many bears will do their best to breach the walls and get inside where the poison is," Bryant told SFGATE. "They will cause a tremendous amount of damage."
Lake Tahoe is a popular tourist destination, with almost 15 million people traveling to the area every year to enjoy the lake or snowboard and ski.
There are an estimated 25,000 to 35,000 black bears in California, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.