Sierra Madre residents concerned over increased bear encounters

SIERRA MADRE, Calif. - Bear sightings in Sierra Madre are nothing new. But are bears in the foothills bad news? It depends on whom you ask. While some residents in the community enjoy the animals, others are calling for the state to do more to keep the bears from coming down from the Angeles National Forrest.

Carla Cowan loves the bears who visit her regularly.

"I have them in my yard all the time," said Cowan. "They take naps in the yard, they come in and they drink water. One came into the house. And I just told him he wasn't supposed to be in the house and he just went outside."

Glenn Lambdin isn't as charmed by the black bears.

"Now we see more bears walking on the street than we see loose dogs," he said.

His home is about a mile south of Cowan's. He thinks there are too many bears and not enough food in the wilderness. They come down from the forest and raid garbage cans. 

"They are moving farther south, because as we up here in this interface area are locking our trash, the bears have to go farther down hill. They're expanding their urban area," Lambdin said.

Lambdin is the former Mayor of Sierra Madre and spoke to the City Council Tuesday. The issue is personal for him. His granddaughter was at school when a bear lumbered onto campus. 

"Sierra Madre Elementary School was in shutdown because right as the kids were being released there was a bear on campus October of last year," Lambdin said. "Sierra Madre Police had to respond until the bear was shooed away."

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Tim Daly of the California Department of Fish And Wildlife said black bears are not inclined to attack humans, which influences the way the department handles the animals.

"We don't treat them as a threat though incidents, encounters, the very rare attack can happen," Daly said.

But according to Lambdin, over four years in Sierra Madre, there've been four reported incidents of bears getting too close to people, more than any other area in the state.

"So far, nothing lethal," Lambdin said. "My concern is now that we see the bears comfortable going onto school campuses, that it's only a matter of time until we actually have a tragedy with one of the children.

Lambden asked the Sierra Madre City Council Tuesday to put pressure on the Department of Fish and Wildlife and the State to recognize that this is a potential issue. He said he wants "the bear population in the urbanized area reduced to zero," and that the Department of Fish and Wildlife "do their job, manage the wildlife bear population in the Angeles National Forest [and] the population to a level that can sustain the wildlife."

Daly said though that the department's management of the population does not include euthanizing or moving the animals.

"We do not seek we do not hunt, go looking for animals, because we're worried that they might one day be possibly linked to an incident that hasn't happened yet," Daly said. "That's just not what we do. We do not go remove animals because frankly if you remove animals and take them to another community, you've created a problem in that community."