Bear-proof Garbage System? (Tahoe)

[irul&ublo]

OP...you on the west shore? A fed bear will be a dead bear. Get an enclosure.

[old goat]

this brings up the larger question of what happens when everyone has a bear box? There are a lot more bears around than the natural environment can sustain, probably more than there were before Europeans arrived. Increasingly desperate bears will be breaking into houses (my wife has chased one out of the neighbor's kitchen) and cars (2 broken into on our road so far this season), or they will starve. I'm no fan of killing bears but is that less humane than letting them starve to death? In the long run the lack of food will decrease fertility and bring down the population to a sustainable level, but in the short term bears dying one way or another seems inevitable. Hope I'm wrong.

[bodywhomper]

i would suspect that some would move downslope to the west or east and begin crowding the existing (bear) populations in east side and western slope communities. There's very little bearproofing activities on the western slope by me, though we have bears.

[ak_powder_monkey]

You clearly have no experience with Tahoe bears (we don't have the people eating kind you have. why eat garbage when you can eat people). See post #12. Bears around here routinely get into the cans put out in the morning. And when bears get into stuff and someone calls the authorities, the bears are shot (no one relocates them--no place to take them) and a lot of nastiness happens to the people responsible.

Hahahaha

Years in black bear country tells me, there's no such thing as a bear proof trash can. Those metal ones are nice and all but the bears are learning how to get into them.

[teledad]

I'm thinking I'll probably go for a permanent solution, like this. Space is going to be limited in the garage and it seems like the best solution. I'm probably going to wait a winter though. I want to see where the snow plows move the snow. It'd suck to spend $1,000 for a container that is buried under two feet of compressed snow for 4 months each year. (We're at 7,600', where we get a fair amount of snow.)

Best bet is to put it next to the road or driveway (marked well for the plow drivers) - then you just dig out a little snow in front of the doors and don't worry about what's on top. Once there's more than a few feet on the ground it's going to be buried anyway regardless of what the plows are doing. These things are sturdy and will stand up to a heavy snow load (properly installed). We're only at 7000' but on the crest so we get a little snow as well (last winter aside) - in March 2011 I probably had 10 feet of snow on top of the bear box.

[PNWbrit]

Years in black bear country tells me, there's no such thing as a bear proof trash can. Those metal ones are nice and all but the bears are learning how to get into them.

When out local trash hauler introduced their bear proof containers they left a filled one in the grizzly enclosure at Seattle zoo for the day... it worked fine



The $1.50 a month extra I pay is worth it compared to not having to pick up trash off my driveway every time they beat the bungees or chains on the old cans and being able to leave the thing on the street overnight for pick up next morning.

[old goat]

When out local trash hauler introduced their bear proof containers they left a filled one in the grizzly enclosure at Seattle zoo for the day... it worked fine



The $1.50 a month extra I pay is worth it compared to not having to pick up trash off my driveway every time they beat the bungees or chains on the old cans and being able to leave the thing on the street overnight for pick up next morning.

How much does it cost when the grizzlies flatten your can every week?
I bet black bears are smarter than grizzlies, and they have smaller paws. They are thriving, grizzlies certainly aren't, although there are people thinking about introducing them back into California. That would be very interesting. Grizzlies don't stand a chance in the long run anywhere there are a lot of people.

[jamesp]

they use their claws, all those different bear proof containers are based on no edges the bears can get their claws under, & being big enough so they can't get the jaws around them. Think big, rounded, smooth.

[PNWbrit]

How much does it cost when the grizzlies flatten your can every week?
I bet black bears are smarter than grizzlies, and they have smaller paws. They are thriving, grizzlies certainly aren't, although there are people thinking about introducing them back into California. That would be very interesting. Grizzlies don't stand a chance in the long run anywhere there are a lot of people.

We don't have grizzlies* but the two neighborhood black bears gave up trying to get in.

* except in far north cascades.

[bodywhomper]

california and tahoe would be a very different place if there were grizzlies around, http://www.sacbee.com/2014/07/13/654...e-grizzly.html

[bodywhomper]

argh. our local just broke our WM can. i was using a pretty tight bungee. the bungee was still attached, but the lid and part of the can this morning were twisted/broken. gonna look into the locking lid style tomorrow....

[Damian Sanders]

This could work!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQDy-5IQvuU