Before the ice rink at the Tahoe ski resort Heavenly had even opened to the public, a well-known local bear named Charlie decided to test the ice out for himself, and no one was going to tell him he had to leave.

San Francisco opened its outdoor holiday ice rink last week, as so many communities do this time of year. Though for this story, we will draw your attention to the outdoor ice rink at the Tahoe ski resort Heavenly, or rather, their open-air collection of stores and restaurants known as the Shops at Heavenly Village, located at the California-Nevada border. That destination opened their outdoor ice rink this past Thursday.

But the first visitor the ice rink hosted was very unauthorized, and probably didn’t even pay. KRON4 reports that a black bear hogged the ice rink all to himself. The bear is a male black bear known to locals as “Charlie,” and is known to stroll around the ski resort and local communities.  

“We just opened the ice rink today,” the Shops at Heavenly Village spokesperson Dreu Murin told KRON4. “He was the first one who took to the ice this year.”

Speaking to the Reno Gazette Journal, Murin said of Charlie that "He has become somewhat of a local celebrity, often wandering through the village at night or early mornings on a stroll." He added, "I guess he wanted to try it out."

Charlie apparently spent all of ten minutes on the ice, and we will say, he observed the posted rules of “No shoes on ice!” and “Do not carry children on skates. And as always, the Shops at Heavenly Village stressed the more important rule that you should not feed or interact with Charlie, or any other bears.

The Shops at Heavenly Village’s ice rink and other attractions are currently open, while the ski resort Heavenly opens for skiing and snowboarding on Friday, November 21.

Related: Black Bear Commandeers Tahoe Ice Cream Shop, Woofs Down Strawberry Ice Cream [SFist]

Image: Visit Heavenly Village Lake Tahoe via Facebook

A bear nicknamed “Hope” is slated for euthanization after a reported dozen incursions into people’s homes in just the last three months, but Tahoe bear activists are fighting back, while concerned about what will happen with Hope’s young cub.

In this summer’s exploits of bears breaking into human habitats for food, there have been some scary incidents. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) had to euthanize a bear in late June after its attacks hospitalized one person and harassed several other campers at Eagle Point Campground. Then in late August, a bear known as “bear 753” nearly caused a house to burn down when it broke in and somehow left the gas stovetops on full blast.  

“The female bear carries the yellow ear tag numbered 753 and is well-known to CDFW and the local community,” the CDFW said in a warning. “This particular bear has a long history of home invasions and escalating conflict behavior in South Lake Tahoe dating to 2022.  Since July 20, 2025, DNA evidence has linked this bear to at least 12 home incursions in South Lake Tahoe of both occupied and unoccupied homes.”

As bear 753’s break-ins have continued to rack up, the CDFW has decided to euthanize the bear, according to KPIX. But a group called Bear League, who took these photos and videos of this bear they call Hope and her cub named Bounce, is putting up a fight to save the bear that’s slated to be killed.

KPIX has confirmed that the state agency has decided to euthanize the bear. "CDFW had determined that the bear is 'habituated' – meaning it has learned to associate people, homes and neighborhoods as sources of food and has become completely reliant and dependent on those human food sources,” the agency said in a statement to KPIX. “Consequently, CDFW has determined that management action is required, and bear 753 has been approved for lethal removal.”

The CDFW adds that "This sow and now its dependent cub have repeatedly broken into homes, including occupied homes and including situations that were no fault of the property owners. Obviously, this creates an unsafe situation when an adult bear is actively looking to break into homes and other buildings.”

The CDFW insists they are not setting traps for these bears. But as seen above, the folks at Bear League disagree, and claim they’ve seen the traps.

"I cry regularly about it. It's awful they think the only thing they can do is kill the bear," Bear League volunteer team leader Kathi Zollinger tells KPIX. "She's not the only one doing this. There are six moms in the area we are aware of. What are they going to do? Kill them all? That is ridiculous."

And obviously, people are very concerned as to what would become of that little cub Bounce if their mother was to be killed.

"The cub will be evaluated if and when we are able to catch it,” the CDFW told KPIX. “Our goal was to get the cub into a permitted wildlife rehabilitation facility – to break this generational pattern of human conflict and home invasions – and return it to the wild in the spring when it is big enough and old enough to care for itself.”

The folks at the Bear League dispute that these incidents are break-ins and maintain that people are simply being too careless about locking doors, closing windows, and managing their trash. The Bear League also encourages people to wire their homes with systems that provide the bears with a shock when they encroach, though it’s hard to imagine that would be widely adopted given the cost.

So Tahoe residents are encouraged to lock up their houses securely, keep their trash inaccessible to wildlife, and clear fruit from their yards as frequently as possible. But as far as the fate of “bear 753” Hope and her cub Bounce, that may not be enough, now that she’s on a state agency’s “hit list.”

Related: Black Bear Commandeers Tahoe Ice Cream Shop, Woofs Down Strawberry Ice Cream [SFist]

Image: A black bear fishes for salmon backlit by fall color reflection at Prosser Creek near Lake Tahoe (Getty Images)

An ice cream bear jamboree was broken up by El Dorado County Sheriff’s deputies in South Lake Tahoe early Sunday morning, but not before that bear put a serious dent in the strawberry ice cream supply.

It remains the height of bear season in the Lake Tahoe area, and as always, people are advised to absolutely never feed the bears human food. After all, they’re pretty good at rummaging around for their own human food. The Chronicle reports on an amusing example of this, as in the wee hours of this past Sunday morning, a black bear broke into the Ice Cream Shop at South Lake Tahoe’s Camp Richardson. And as you would guess, that bear sauntered behind the counter and unapologetically helped themselves to the ice cream.

The El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office was called to the scene. “The deputies could barely believe their eyes as they saw a large bear behind the counter of the shop,” that office said in a Monday Facebook post. “With some encouragement, the bear ultimately left, but only after showing interest in the strawberry ice cream.”

No one was injured, and the bear did not cause any damage, short of relieving the shop of some delicious strawberry ice cream.

I scream with laughter over this particular incident, but the brazenness of bears has been a serious and escalating problem in the Lake Tahoe region for the last several summers. The Chronicle points out that just this year alone, a separate South Lake Tahoe bear had to be euthanized after years of home break-ins and aggressive behavior, and a separate mama bear is currently under watch because she’s teaching her little cub how to break into homes.  

You may recall the yearslong saga of Hank the Tank (actually a female) whose rap sheet grew to nearly two dozen Tahoe area break-ins between 2021 and 2023 before she was captured. There have even been cases of bears stalking specific humans, and the side effect that more bears are being hit by cars.  

So things remain complicated in the human-bear dynamic in Lake Tahoe, and there's no reason to think we won't see bears making themselves more and more comfortable in human environs around those parts.  

Related: Big Ol’ Black Bear Makes Self Right At Home In Marin County Front Yard [SFist]

Image: El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office via Facebook

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

There was a very rare black bear attack on a human being on Monday in Tuolumne County, but the 24-year-old jogger who suffered the attack has since reportedly been released from the hospital.

While it’s extremely rare for a California black bear to attack a person, we’ve now seen a few examples of this within the last nine months. The first was back in November 2023, when a  71-year-old woman was fatally mauled by a black bear in Sierra County’s Downieville, and the bear had apparently been stalking her for months. Last month, a black bear in Yosemite National Park charged at a man and ripped his clothing.

Now we have another of these attacks, as a black bear attacked a 24-year-old jogger this past Monday at around 5 pm in the Tuolumne County community of Long Barn, according to SFGate. While that report notes the man is in stable condition, other media reports indicate he’s already been released from the hospital.

As Sacramento’s KOVR explains, the unidentified 24-year-old man was on a run when he encountered a bear cub. The mother bear emerged from the trees and began to chase the jogger. She attacked him and pushed him into a ditch, giving him several scrapes and gouges. (Ironically, one of the gouges was on his thigh, “right where the man has a tattoo of a bear” according to KOVR.) He smacked the bear with a stick and managed to get away, but only briefly.

"I see this young man running down the road and a bear literally chasing and biting at him, and his shirt flapping in the wind,” neighbor Heather Silfies told KOVR. “It was just shredded and he didn't have one of his shoes on all the way, so he's literally running with the shoe not on.”

The man then jumped onto the top of Silfies’s SUV. "The young man is standing on the roof of our Escalade," she continued. "The bear is standing at the Escalade and she's trying to climb up. So she has her foot on the running board and she's literally jumping up at him, wanting to get on the roof, just wanting to attack him."

The bear was successfully chased off, and per People magazine, the unnamed man was treated at Adventist Health in Sonora. But Silfies told KOVR that the man has since come back to their home to thank her family, so it sounds like he’s been released.

“That's not normal bear behavior to attack a person,” Department of Fish and Wildlife captain Patrick Foy told the local paper Union Democrat. “It’s very much not normal behavior for a bear. This bear has showed unusual aggression towards a human. The bear is still out in the community. We haven’t caught it. We don’t know if we will catch this one. There's a reduced chance because this is not a bear that's habituated to people and people sources of food.”

And Foy added, “If we get a bear in the trap and we get a DNA profile of the bear in the trap, if that bear matches the DNA samples we collected from the attack, that bear will be euthanized.”

Related: NorCal Woman Killed By Black Bear Had Been Complaining About Animal Stalking Her Home For Months [SFist]

Image: American black bear (Ursus americanus) cub. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee )Getty Images)

A troublesome trend in Lake Tahoe, where “40 to 50” bears have been hit by cars this summer, with 20 of these collisions happening in just the last month.

This summer’s staggering surge in Lake Tahoe tourism, and a new tendency for bears to wander more aggressively into human areas, is producing a tragic trend. SFGate reports that 20 bears have been hit by cars in the Lake Tahoe region in the last month alone. And a representative from a bear awareness and protection nonprofit says that “40 to 50” bears have been hit by cars this summer, putting the region on pace for the deadliest year ever for bear-car collisions.

“Unfortunately, I think it’s going to be a record year, really,” Ann Bryant, director of that nonprofit Bear League, tells SFGate. “We’ve had many, many this year. A lot are OK — they’re limping but healing. But a lot die.”

The Bear League is the go-to organization for the California Highway Patrol whenever a bear-car collision is reported. They send a volunteer to the site to monitor the bear while Highway Patrol directs traffic, and the bear is often able to shake it off after a few minutes. But sometimes the bear does require treatment (and the Bear League can only provide treatment to bears who are less than a year old). And in some extreme cases, the the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has to euthanize the bear.

“I think it’s tourism, there’s just so much traffic,” according to Bryant. “I mean, it’s definitely a record year for visitors, and they don’t think about watching for wildlife. They just motor along, looking at pinecones and whatever. I’ve never seen it like this. And then there’s so much construction, and that makes people move in a hurry.”

The roads and highways that see the most bear-vehicle collisions tend to be Route 89 and I-80 on the California side, and State Route 28 in Nevada. Wildlife advocates worry that this will year’s total will surpass the 2007 record of 94 bear-vehicle collisions, as the forthcoming months of September and October are when these accidents usually peak.  

“This is bear country; it’s wildlife country,” Bryant tells SFGate. “We have to share the road with animals, and you have to always be thinking that there could be an animal right ahead. If you see one bear, it could be a Mama bear with cubs right behind her.”

Related: Tahoe Bear Hank the Tank's Reign of Terror Ends In Capture — and a New Home [SFist]

Image: BEAR League via Facebook

South Lake Tahoe's most wanted fugitive has finally been captured.

"Hank the Tank," the formidable female black bear responsible for a trail of more than 20 home break-ins, was taken in Friday, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) said in a release.

DNA evidence had previously confirmed that Hank was behind at least 21 break-ins in the area, which reportedly caused extensive property damage, since 2022. She’s also apparently a suspect in several more (although DNA cleared her from a few others previously thought to be her handiwork).

Hank was discovered in March denning under a residence in South Lake Tahoe along with her  three male cubs of the year, according to CDFW, and state officials collected her DNA, attached an ear tag, and put a satellite tracking collar on her at the time. Her cubs were also microchipped. However, Hank managed to shed the collar by May and continued to evade capture.

But on Friday morning, wildlife biologists found and apprehended Hank and her cubs, who accompanied her on several break-ins. Don't worry — she won't be euthanized. Hank will instead be taken to the 10,000-acre The Wild Animal Sanctuary near Springfield, Colorado, where she’ll be free to roam. The CDFW said that it is unusual to relocate “conflict bears” like Hank the Tank — meaning bears that have become accustomed to human food sources and interacting with people — because they’ll usually just cause trouble somewhere else. But the agency said it is making an exception due to “the widespread interest in this bear, and the significant risk of a serious incident involving the bear.”

As for the cubs, they’re potentially headed towards a fresh start at the Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue, where officials hope to recondition their behaviors and unlearn their mischief. One cub seems to have been hit by a car recently, and will undergo a thorough veterinary check. His mobility and potential for rehabilitation are promising signs.

RELATED: It Ain’t Just Hank the Tank — DNA Shows At Least Four Different Bears Plundering Tahoe Homes

Feature image of Hank the Tank via the California Department of Wildlife.

The rare sight of a black bear was captured on security camera footage from a San Rafael home, and it's reportedly the second bear sighting in Marin County in the past month.

Here’s a hair-raising coincidence, at least the way NBC Bay Area describes it. At roughly 2 a.m. Tuesday morning, in the San Rafael neighborhood of Terra Linda, resident Caitlin Estrella was comforting her five-year-old daughter after the youngster had a nightmare that a bear was having a picnic near their home. And while she was calming her daughter, she received a security camera notification that there was in fact a black bear in her yard.

A snippet of that security camera footage can be seen above. “I was running around the house locking all the doors because, where my sister lives, the black bears open the door handles,” Estrella told NBC Bay Area. “I wasn’t going to take any chances.”

This is reportedly the second bear sighting in Marin County in the last month, as the Bay Area News Group adds that a bear was spotted in Larkspur in May. Those two sightings were only about eight miles apart, so there is some possibility that it’s the same bear. NBC Bay Area says the bear “ate all of the red strawberries from their garden,” but did not eat any garbage, which bears will often do.

“Bears will eat anything,” Alison Hermance, director of communication for the wildlife hospital WildCare, told NBC Bay Area. “They’ll even lick outdoor BBQs and grills. Homeowners can help keep bears at bay by making sure their trash is sealed, bringing in bird feeders and pet food and even cleaning their outdoor grills.”

Residents of areas where bears might meander are also advised put trash out the day of collection and not the night before, and of course, to never feed the bears.

Related: It Ain’t Just Hank the Tank — DNA Shows At Least Four Different Bears Plundering Tahoe Homes [SFist]

Image: via  Caitlin Estrella

A (presumably off-course) black bear was spotted early Sunday strolling around Petaluma. The sighting triggered a shelter-in-place advisory for the Raymond Heights neighborhood — leaving residents concerned, perplexed, and curious about the bear's whereabouts.

As the adage goes: The closer humans encroach on nature, the more likely nature is expected to come into their lives, unexpectedly and completely unannounced. Such a scenario played out in a small southwestern neighborhood in Petaluma Sunday, which led to local police taking to social media announcing that there was a wayward bear in the area.

“We are monitoring the situation and coordinating with North Bay Animal Services and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife,” according to a post on the Petaluma Police Department Facebook page, which was published around 8 a.m. Sunday; police noted that the bear made its way up a tree, where it remained. “The bear has climbed up a tree and has remained contained there. Community members are requested to stay out of the area and those in the area are encouraged to stay indoors and keep pets inside.”

As of publishing, no further updates have been given on the bear's condition or whether or not it safely exited the tree.

Black bear sightings have become increasingly more common in the North Bay over the past few years — especially since the pandemic began and wildfires started ravishing parts of the region. These large omnivores have been seen seeking urban refuge from blazes near Lake Tahoe, as well as one lone bear that was seen up a tree earlier this year in Marin.

Some 35,000 black bears are estimated to exist in California — a figure that's more than double of what their numbers were back in the 1980s.

And remember: Never approach, offer food, or provoke wildlife... no matter what YouTube algorithm fed you a video of a 500-pound brown bear cuddling up to its "owner." Black bears, like coyotes and rattlesnakes and raccoons, aren't domesticated fauna. They're meant to be left unbothered in the wild; it's our job as the dominant species on this planet to respect that boundary.

"In the event that wildlife is encountered in the community do not approach them," capped the Petaluma Police Department in its Facebook post on the rogue bear. "Should community members encounter wildlife in town please report those incidents so we can work to safety assist the animal out of the area."

Related: Tahoe Bears Took Advantage Of Empty Neighborhoods, Went to Town on Trash Cans, Rotting Food

Black Bear Euthanized for Burns Suffered in Caldor Fire

Top Image: Getty Images/yingyang0

Bear detained.All good, no injuries. Cinnamon back to his home in Hume Lake:) pic.twitter.com/nPsnu2Px44

— Fresno Police (@FresnoPolice) December 22, 2015

Beware of hitchhikers — they just might be dangerous, as one, a live bear who caught a ride to Fresno, presumably was. The Fresno Bee reports that the animal was spotted this afternoon and is suspected of getting a ride down from the mountains on a trash truck. It disembarked in town where it was detained, uninjured, tranquilized by animal control officials and local police.

Some have nicknamed the bear Cinnamon, presumably as Paddington had already been claimed. Cinnamon is now headed home to the Hume Lake area, the paper reports.

Related: One Of Those Tuesday Warning System Towers Turned Off Because It's A Hawk's Nest Now

Over the weekend, a man climbed into the bear enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo. Authorities still aren't sure why Kenneth Herron, 21, who is described as a "transient," made his way into the grizzly bear grotto late Sunday afternoon. It seems Herron managed to scale a wall, get himself into the enclosure, and crouch behind some bushes once inside.

San Francisco fire Lt. Mindy Talmadge tells CBS 5/AP, "One bear started to go after him full-stride. He just sat there ... did get close enough to sniff him and put his paw on him."

After staffers arrived on the scene and fired two warning shots in the air, they "secured the bears inside their dens without incident."

Herron, who was rescued without injury, "was not cooperative and also unresponsive." He was also described as "stoic, almost zombie-like." He is currently sitting in a San Francisco jail this morning.

Watch video of the incident after the jump.

WhatImSeeing's Plug1--who Mayor Newsom apparently just looooves--sent us this today. He snapped it up at SFO this afternoon. We suspect it's the head of one of those bears. Clever.

Starting this Thursday (Feb. 14) and going until next Monday (Feb 18) will be the International Bear Rendezvous, a yearly party for bears and bear lovers, sponsored by the Bears of San Francisco. What are bears, you ask? Bears are above-averagely hairy and/or fat men of the homosexual persuasion. Although considered a subset of the overall queer community, they were, arguably, quite popular for a brief moment in time, or so sayeth the holy word of Marc Jacobs.

SFBG's cub editor describes the annual gathering as such:

The conference/celebration takes place Feb 14-18 at the Holiday Inn Golden Gateway -- and it's pretty all-encompassing, with satellite pudge-parties and ravenous ribaldry (with Tiffany?!?), and also a few panels and local vendor booths (although the emphasis seems less and less on these each year).

We would love to attend, but all SFist contributors are required to be on a strict pin-thin diet of prune juice, Peruvian flake, perfumed air, and sleep deprivation. But we'll try to crash a party or two and bring back images of the large and in charge revelry.