Spare the bear: Hank the Tank avoids death, relocation thanks to DNA evidence
Turns out Hank the Tank got a bad rap. The rotund black bear from Lake Tahoe that captured international attention won’t be killed or moved to a sanctuary after all.
At least for now.
On Thursday, state wildlife officials issued a pardon and vindication of sorts for the 500-pound black bear that they had originally said was solely responsible for burglarizing nearly three dozen homes in the Tahoe Keys neighborhood of South Lake Tahoe over the past few months.
Officials with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said Thursday that DNA samples collected from the properties showed that at least two other large black bears had broken into some of the homes.
As a result, the distinctive bear with a light-brown muzzle and an inky black beach-ball shaped body won’t be killed or relocated to a sanctuary — options state officials had been weighing as they decided what to do about the habitual bear burglar.
Instead, state officials said they will begin a neighborhood-wide “trap, tag, haze” effort in Tahoe Keys to try to keep all three bears, including Hank, out of homes.
“During this effort, CDFW will gather information and learn from scientific analysis to help inform and refine our bear management in the Lake Tahoe Basin,” the wildlife agency said in a written statement. “CDFW is not going to euthanize any bears that are trapped during this effort.”
Any of these bears could still end up in a trap, and shot by a government official, however, because of a separate process.
Under California law, someone who has property damaged by a bear and meets a set of requirements could request a permit from the state to have a government bear trap placed on their lots, said Jordan Traverso, a spokeswoman for the Department of Fish and Wildlife.
If caught, the bear would then be killed if evidence, such as DNA, proved it was the same bear that broke in. Last fall, at least three different property owners in Tahoe Keys received permits to have a trap placed on their lots, though it’s not clear whether they did any trapping, according to the Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The story of Hank the Tank took off in early February when state officials announced that they were setting out traps to catch the bear that for more than seven months, “and despite intense hazing and other mitigation efforts,” had caused extensive property damage in 33 cases in and around Tahoe Keys.
Dead bolted doors, officials said, were no obstacle. The fat bear would just push them open. The South Lake Tahoe Police Department received more than 150 complaints about the bear that officers started calling “Hank the Tank.”
He was declared a “severely food-habituated bear” under California’s 2022 black bear policy that gives state officials the authority to either euthanize a problem bear or move it to a new forested area or a licensed animal sanctuary.
For years, state officials have been leery of moving the bears that regularly break into Tahoe homes into the wilderness, saying previous studies have shown they almost always wander back, even if dropped off long distances. Large adult bears like Hank, state officials said, also make for poor candidates for animal sanctuaries because they don’t adapt well to captivity and pose a danger to their caregivers or to other animals in the facility.
It was beginning to look like Hank might be euthanized. Local bear lovers and animal rights activists, including Tahoe’s Bear League, were furious.
Someone spray painted “Bear Killer” on at least one of the state’s bear traps, according to one of the Bear League’s Facebook posts. (Thursday’s announcement from the state urged activists not to vandalize the state’s bear traps.)
“As everyone knows, Hank is being targeted for death by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife,” the group posted Sunday on Facebook. “The BEAR League is vehemently opposed to this plan, and we are frantically working to save his life by reaching out to various wildlife sanctuaries in hopes of finding him a safe home.”
As news of Hank’s potential demise spread — and pictures of his bulbous body were shared widely on social media — the bear quickly became a celebrity. His story was featured in news outlets across the world.
Those who didn’t want Hank the Tank to die made so many calls to local officials that on Wednesday the South Lake Tahoe Police Department put out a plea on social media urging people to stop calling their dispatch center demanding Hank be spared.
Hank the Tank isn’t Tahoe’s only burglar bear
While Hank may have become famous, he’s only one of dozens of bears that have come into conflict with their human neighbors in the Tahoe Basin, despite a decades-long campaign to urge communities to lock up trash and food that originally lured bears from the wilderness.
Biologists say the Tahoe region’s bear population, already one of the densest in North America, is growing and that wildfires and drought last year pushed even more out of the deep woods and into communities.
During the Caldor Fire, bears wandered freely through evacuated towns, leading to dozens of reports of potentially dangerous bear encounters.
Several families also returned to find that their houses had been spared from flames but had been ransacked by bears.
But even in years when there aren’t major wildfires, entire neighborhoods have suffered break ins.
In 2019, bears damaged more than 75 homes in a single west shore Tahoe neighborhood, according to local officials. The damage from a bear breaking into a home can be substantial. Bears use their powerful bodies and claws to tear through cabinets, furniture and refrigerators rummaging for human food. One property owner told The Sacramento Bee in 2019 that the bears had done close to $100,000 in damage inside her home.
In the case of Hank (or his doppelgangers), the three property owners who received permits from the state to have him trapped described having extensive damage to their homes.
“A couple of days ago, November 24th, he came twice and destroyed our garage door and broke into and broke our freezer which only had ice in it. It was brand new,” one of the property owners wrote in an wildlife incident report obtained by The Bee. “The first day our garage was broken into and my husband and I were cleaning up the pieces, he aggressively chased us into our house. We have nothing as far as food anywhere that would attract him.”
“He went in and out of the house taking food from the refrigerator and cabinets,” wrote another homeowner. “His visit caused ~$6000 worth of damage.”
But the prospect of the government killing a problem bear in the neighborhoods around Lake Tahoe is almost always met with fierce blowback.
In Tahoe, the animals that saunter through neighborhoods, walk along crowded beaches, leap on picnic tables and nap in backyards are given pet names like “T-Shirt,” “Butterscotch” and “Rascal.” Animal lovers will hold memorial services when one is killed in a government trap.
Local animal rights activists say no bear should die because they’re being irresponsibly lured by humans leaving out food and by not securing their garbage in bear-proof receptacles or not locking their homes.
They say that the bears aren’t dangerous when left alone and homes are secured.
Bear attacks have led to injuries
While Hank the Tank never hurt anyone, some other Tahoe-area bears have.
“(Reporting party) was refilling bird feeders in evening and heard a noise, turned around and bear came at her,” read a 2017 Department of Fish and Wildlife report from the Truckee area. “(The bear) knocked her down, swatted/scratched in back and on arm, bit several times in the neck. Treated at hospital, ok.”
“(Reporting party) heard a noise in his home after going to bed. He came downstairs and was confronted by a bear that had broken in,” read a report from 2017 in Tahoe City. “Bear stood on hind legs and swiped the victim across the head. Victim retreated but re-entered to try and make the bear leave. Bear swiped his stomach and knocked him down before leaving the cabin. 32 staples.”
“Victim received 23 stitches on two facial lacerations, and was also torn on the neck and shoulder,” read a 2018 incident report after a 550-pound bear entered a South Lake Tahoe home.
Wildlife officials killed two of those bears. The other was never found.
In June, a vacation renter inside a Meyers home shot a nearly 500-pound bear with a handgun after it pushed him over and put its mouth around his arm. It didn’t bite down, and the man wasn’t hurt. Wildlife officials ended up shooting and killing the severely wounded bear the next morning.
Then on Oct. 30, a bear attacked a woman inside her Tahoe Vista home, badly wounding her.
Dr. Laurel-Rose Von Hoffmann-Curzi — a 66-year-old physician being treated for cancer — told The Sacramento Bee last year she woke up to noises in her kitchen. The bear that had been rummaging through her refrigerator charged her when she walked out to see what the commotion was.
After the attack, doctors sewed multiple layers of stitches in her face. She developed abscesses from the deep, bruising bites on her breast and abdomen. The risk of infection from the still-healing wounds caused her doctors to postpone the chemotherapy treatment she’s undergoing for a form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
That bear never was captured.
After both attacks last year, local animal rights activists harassed the humans involved. Von Hoffmann-Curzi said her home and the trap government officials placed outside her home were vandalized.
California reluctant to kill bears
Short of a documented attack on a person, California officials will rarely kill even the most habituated of bears.
State officials estimate that since 2017 they’ve killed fewer than five Tahoe bears deemed to be too habituated or a threat to public safety.
That’s in stark contrast to what happens on Nevada’s side of Lake Tahoe. Since 2015, biologists and wildlife officers in that state have killed 36 bears after making the judgment call that the bears’ behavior was unsafe, according to the Nevada Department of Wildlife.
In California, officials will instead almost always punt the controversial decision to the property owners.
State officials issue what’s known as a “depredation permit” to a property owner who’s had a bear break in and who had otherwise tried to secure their garbage and food from bears.
Since 2017, California officials have granted more than 71 depredation permits to property owners, but only 13 bears were killed, state officials said late last year.
Critics of California’s depredation permit system say it leads to so much harassment from local activists that many others have decided it’s not worth having a bear killed, even in cases where the bears exhibited dangerous behavior.
For the past few years, California’s wildlife department has been trapping bears in Tahoe to determine which ones are the repeat offenders. The bear’s ear is pierced with a numbered ear tag before it’s sent on its way, usually after a few painful paintball gun shots to reinforce the notion that humans should be avoided.
Before the bear’s release, the biologists collect DNA samples from the bear’s saliva, hair and blood to later be compared with samples collected following a home break-in where the bear burglar fled the scene.
Thursday’s announcement said the state’s wildlife biologists will “need ample community support” from Tahoe Keys residents to continue this trapping effort as well as volunteers willing to have the state’s traps placed on their lots.
In their announcement, state wildlife officials also continued to appeal to neighborhoods to lock garbage up in bear-proof bins since scientific studies in the Tahoe region have shown that doing so dramatically reduces reports of problem bears. Yet some Tahoe communities, including Tahoe Keys neighborhood where Hank got into trouble, do not mandate the containers.
“The Tahoe Keys homeowners have association rules they have to follow regarding the installation of bear boxes,” said Kevin Thomas, a Department of Fish and Wildlife regional manager. “But we are working with them on it. It is a simple step that might be the single biggest step to help the bears.”
Biologists and activists agree on another point: The tens of thousands of Tahoe tourists continue to contribute greatly to the problem because they don’t know or disregard proper “Bear Aware” behavior when it comes to trash and stowing away food.
“It is critical that Tahoe Keys residents and everyone who lives or recreates in the Lake Tahoe Basin carefully store food and trash,” officials said Thursday. “Increasingly, CDFW is involved in bear/human conflicts that could have been avoided by people taking a few simple actions.”
This story was originally published February 24, 2022 at 2:43 PM with the headline "Spare the bear: Hank the Tank avoids death, relocation thanks to DNA evidence."