09/23/2026
It's Fat Bear Week. Katmai National Park's brown bears are getting rightly famous for their salmon bellies, and we'll be voting like everyone else. (Link in the comments — go pick your bear!)
But we want to talk about the bears in our neighborhood, because they're doing the exact same thing right now, and the menu is different.
From late summer until the snow flies, our Sierra black bears go into hyperphagia — literally "excessive eating." It's a hormonal shift, not just "that time of the year". A bear that ate 5,000 calories a day in June is trying to eat 20,000 a day in October. It needs to put on a third of its body weight before it dens. After the snow falls, for the next four to six months it won't eat, drink, or go to the bathroom, and if it's a momma, she'll give birth and nurse cubs in that state. Hopefully not under your house! But if she does, call the BEAR League for help!
To survive the winter, a bear in hyperphagia changes its behavior. It ranges farther. It stays up later. It takes risks it would never take in July — walking a lit street, testing a garage door, sitting outside a kitchen window. It's not being bold. It's doing math. We all know our local bears are already a bit bolder than they should be, so it's even more incumbent on us to take our responsibility seriously.
Here's the math on your trash can: a single week of household garbage is roughly a day's worth of calories for a hungry bear, and it took zero effort to get. Pine nuts and manzanita berries take all day. Once a bear learns that it can get into your trash, it will be back tomorrow night. Then every fall. Then it will teach its cubs.
And those are the bears that end up in a trap. Or perhaps even shot by a homeowner! Habituated bears get relocated once, then euthanized. Tahoe already has bears that don't bother hibernating at all because trash keeps them fed through the winter.
A fed bear is a dead bear. That's not just a slogan; it's how this ends for the bear if we don't fix the trash.
So: vote for a fat bear this week. Then make sure the ones near you are getting fat the right way. Secure your trash. If you don't have a bear box yet, we have them in stock and we're installing through the first snows — and now through October 31, Econo Series bundles are up to $100 off.
Protect your trash, your home, your neighborhood, and the bears.
Founded in 2003, Bear Box designs, manufactures, services and installs bear-proof trash enclosures throughout the Lake Tahoe and Sierra region. Our enclosures re IGBC-approved, exceed Architectural Standards Committees' standards, and are North America's top choice for bear-resistant trash enclosure...
