Residents of Sierra Madre have been dealing with an unexpected neighbor for the past few weeks—a bear has taken up residence in the crawlspace of a home near North Sunnyside Avenue and West Highland Avenue. The homeowners, Bob and Sara Nesler, first noticed the bear, whom they've since named "Junior," when they started to find droppings in their yard. Their laid-back response to the wildlife situation was to simply hope that "Junior" would eventually decide to leave of his own volition. According to a KTLA report, Susan Nesler said, "If it was a grizzly bear, I'd pack and go, but it's a black bear...so if I don't bother him, he won't bother me."
While the bear has been a non-threatening presence, coming and going mostly at night, the situation has to be addressed for safety reasons. In efforts to humanely encourage the bear to vacate, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has helped the Nelsers to install a motion-activated camera that activates a sprinkler system aimed to gently dissuade "Junior" from sticking around. "Fish and Wildlife has pretty much taken charge of not hurting the bear...we made sure of that," Bob Nesler told KTLA.
The Sierra Madre is situated on the southern edge of the Angeles National Forest, and interactions between humans and bears are not extraordinary occurrences. "He comes in, apparently, around 5, 5:30 in the morning and leaves late at night," Bob Nesler said in an interview with NBC Los Angeles. The Department of Fish and Wildlife has emphasized a wait-and-see approach, planning to secure the property more robustly once "Junior" opts to relocate.
Kevin Howells of the same department was quoted in an NBC article saying, "We would wait for the bear to leave the crawlspace." He added, "And then, I would work with the homeowner to maybe get that space boarded up with something more robust."
Sightings of bears, particularly black bears, are increasingly common in California, with the population estimated between 25,000 and 30,000. They are known to forage in human communities, especially when faced with food scarcity in their natural habitats. The Nelsers have expressed that they only want "Junior" removed if it can be done humanely, and wildlife officials are certainly aiming to handle the situation with care, evident in their strategic use of non-harmful deterrents—a critical decision by all parties as the bear saga under the Sierra Madre home continues. "It's a good tenant. He's not bad, it's just a bear," Susan Nesler humorously remarked to ABC7.
