3 Bear Killings Anger Tahoe

Before the threats to burn it down or paint it blood red, the cabin nestled in the woods on Tanager Drive near Lake Tahoe was clearly owned by bear lovers.

The front door featured a bear artfully etched in glass. A wood-carved bruin had a cherished place in a bedroom. And on the hour, when a cuckoo clock chimed, bears circled a merry-go-round and bobbed on a teeter-totter.

Then, three real bears -- a mother and two cubs that had used the home’s crawl space as a den -- busted in while Russ and Diane Tonda were away, ripping furniture, defecating on the floor and prompting the couple to have them killed. Angry bear activists have dubbed them bear killers.

“I don’t know anything about bears other than it’s been a nightmare,” Russ Tonda said.

Now, as a prosecutor weighs whether to bring charges in the killings and sheriff’s deputies investigate human vandalism at the house in the aftermath, the incident has reopened debate over how to deal with Lake Tahoe’s growing bear problem.

It seems that everyone who’s spent time at Tahoe has a bear story. You overhear them at the convenience store, the bakery, even on ski chairlifts -- tales of bears breaking into cars, walking into houses and swiping pies off windowsills.

With a growing population encroaching on their turf, bears have adapted, and many have adopted a diet of human food. Bears have literally come out of the woods for the easy pickings in subdivisions circling the alpine lake.

A 2003 study of black bears in the Tahoe basin found that they had limited their range from 150 square miles to residential neighborhoods; didn’t hibernate as long, or at all, because they could Dumpster-dive all winter; and are much fatter than your average bear.

Because of this, human-bear interaction has been on the rise. In cases such as the Tondas’, bears often hibernate beneath cabins that are vacant much of the winter.

The discovery of uninvited guests often leads to panic. What happens next can determine the bear’s fate.

If the state Department of Fish and Game is called, it advises people how to roust the bears from their den, an option most people resist. They also provide information on obtaining a permit to kill a troublesome bear. Relocating bears is not an option.

When the Placer County sheriff’s office gets bear complaints, it refers them to the Bear League, a 900-member group dedicated to saving the creatures by teaching people how to live among wildlife. The league also specializes in scaring bears that are too comfortable around people.

At the center of the Tonda controversy is the league’s founder, Ann Bryant, a passionate animal lover.

She was rehabilitating wildlife 6 1/2 years ago when she started the organization after a meddlesome bear was trapped and killed. She illegally raised one of its orphan cubs. Her activism has led to two brushes with the law: once for having a loaded weapon and again for relocating a bear.

Bryant and her disciples employ a tough-love approach to bears, hazing them with noisemakers and shooting them with paintball guns or rubber buckshot. In the case of bears that have broken into a house, that approach is controversial -- applauded by some wildlife experts, considered foolish by others.

Carl Lackey, a wildlife biologist for the state of Nevada who responds to bear calls on the eastern side of the lake, said the Bear League was effective in educating people about bears, but should leave hazing to professionals.

When Bryant got the call from the Tondas in January, she responded immediately.

Furniture was tossed about, cabinets were broken, and electrical wiring and heating ducts were destroyed.

“It looked like a bomb had went off,” Russ Tonda said.

Tonda initially estimated the loss at $100,000, but now says that figure was probably too high.

Bryant climbed through a trap door into a crawl space beneath the house and saw one bear sleeping there. She offered to have a backhoe dig a path through the snow; then she would scare the bear out, she said. But she said the couple wanted to let the bear sleep.

Tonda denies that. After talking to his insurance company, he contacted Fish and Game, got a permit to kill one bear and hired three men to do it.

What happened Feb. 4, when the hunters arrived at the cabin, is in dispute.

The men said the startled cubs charged and they had to kill them in self-defense, Fish and Game biologist Patrick Foy said. A distraught Bryant, who arrived after the shooting, doesn’t believe that the cubs would have charged. She also said she felt deceived by the Tondas.

The Department of Fish and Game found the hunters’ story plausible and did not recommend charging them or the Tondas. Bryant and others called on prosecutors to charge them because they killed three bears and had a permit to kill one.

The Placer County district attorney’s office is still investigating, said Chris Cattran, deputy prosecutor.

In the meantime, the Tondas have received death and arson threats. After the incident, Bryant said she received 500 calls over three days from outraged people as far away as Maine, some vowing to get even.

At the PDQ Market, down the street from the site of the killings, manager Barbara Welnetz said the issue had been hot ever since. Angry customers posted fliers on the wall inside the store telling the Tondas to get out of town.

Welnetz said she didn’t hear one customer speak in favor of the killings, but said there was sympathy for the Tondas after the Tahoe World newspaper recently published an op-ed piece with their side of the story.

With the busier summer season coming, Welnetz removed the fliers and cute bear pictures behind the checkout counter in hopes that the topic would die.

“This is a small neighborhood store,” she said. “My employees get pretty vocal. People feel so strongly about this bear issue that I don’t want to encourage talk of these bear killings.”

The Tondas have talked about selling their place, but they don’t want to leave Tahoe, where they’ve been vacationing for 40 years.

They’ve vowed to fix the place, which has been boarded up since $5,000 to $7,000 in human vandalism was discovered Feb. 26.

They plan to redecorate with a woodsy theme -- no bears this time.