Friends and fellow residents,

At its Tuesday, April 21, 2026, 5:30 p.m. meeting, the South Lake Tahoe City Council is presenting an agenda item (#17) pertaining to proposed black bear management protocols in the City, which is the culmination of many hours of meetings of a collaborative group. In this letter, I am sharing my already submitted written public comment on this agenda item, which is as follows:   

“Dear South Lake Tahoe City Councilmembers,

This evening, you will be engaging in an ongoing discussion about management of the black bear population in the City of South Lake Tahoe. I would like to contribute to that discussion by stressing how important our local organization, Clean Tahoe, is to this process, especially given that Clean Tahoe is contracted by South Tahoe Refuse, which is a party to the recent collaborative effort.

There has been a great amount of dialogue in recent months surrounding education about keeping bears wild and safe, but also the enforcement response for city trash code violations that result in bears gaining access to unnatural food sources. It only takes one instance of access to trash or food in a car for a bear to learn the bad behavior, and from there, it can be passed along through the bear generations.

Clean Tahoe is a key liaison between residents observing trash violations and the educational and enforcement arm of South Tahoe Refuse and the City. However, they operate on a skeleton crew, with limited hours. Particularly, they do not operate on weekends, when many of these trash violations tend to occur. The result is that many bear trash break-ins go unreported, with no consequences for the offender, and the teaching moment for humans slips away once again, continuing the cycle of creating problem bears.

My message here is to strongly encourage the expansion of the capacity and operating hours of Clean Tahoe, at least to include some weekend hours. In my opinion, this should absolutely be a bullet point on your to-do list for improving the education and enforcement required to truly reach a point where the bears living here can live their lives wildly and safely.

Respectfully,

Robyn Johnson
Registered Voter and Full-time Resident, City of South Lake Tahoe