Millionaire Lake Tahoe homeowners deploy risky new strategy against escalating bear crisis

Forget security systems, Nevada wildlife officials have found a fur-covered solution to Lake Tahoe’s growing black bear problem.As wealthy homeowners around the lake battle increasingly brazen bears breaking into houses, the Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW) has been relying on two highly trained Karelian bear dogs, Badger and Banjo, to send the unwelcome visitors running.The shaggy canines work alongside state biologists to chase bears out of neighborhoods, flush them from crawl spaces and urban dens, track injured animals and help return them to the wild, all while teaching the predators that humans are bad news.“[The bears’] experiences for the most part around people have been positive,” longtime NDOW bear biologist Carl Lackey told The Nevada Independent.“We’re just trying to give them a bad experience around people.”Unlike some wildlife agencies that haze bears with rubber bullets, bean bag rounds or tasers, Nevada has leaned heavily on its four-legged specialists.“They’re a tool that a lot of agencies just haven’t endorsed.

You can’t just assign somebody a dog,” Lackey said.“It has to be somebody who wants one of these dogs and is willing to put in the time.”The breed, originally developed in Finland and Russia to hunt large game, has become an unlikely weapon as bear encounters have climbed alongside Nevada’s booming black bear population.Once nearly wiped out by habitat destruction and illegal hunting, the state’s black bears dwindled to about 30 animals by the 1980s.Conservation efforts fueled a dramatic rebound, and wildlife officials now estimate there are between 600 and 700 bears roaming western Nevada.That comeback has also meant more run-ins with people.Lackey, who recently retired after nearly 33 years with NDOW, launched the state’s bear dog program about 25 years ago after seeing Karelian bear dogs featured on a National Geographic program.“I saw these guys working a bear, and I thought ‘this is a great i...